Mystery British Airways IT Failure

The IT shutdown that led to chaos for British Airways was caused by an “uncontrolled return of power” following an outage that physically damaged servers at its data centre, the airline has said.

Experts have questioned British Airways’ claim that this weekend’s catastrophic IT failure was down to a “power surge”, as the company’s chief executive has claimed.

The airline industry is notorious for running outdated infrastructure long after standards have improved. In December, for instance, it was revealed that passenger booking systems used by multiple airlines were easy prey for hackers.

About 75,000 passengers were affected as BA flights were cancelled following the incident on Saturday 27th May morning. The carrier was unable to resume a full schedule until Tuesday 30th and many passengers are still without their luggage.

BA was accused of greed after the GMB union said the issue could have been prevented if the airline had not cut the jobs of “hundreds of dedicated and loyal” IT staff and contracted the work to India last year.

The cause of the initial power outage and the subsequent surge has not yet been revealed. “There was a loss of power to the UK data centre which was compounded by the uncontrolled return of power which caused a power surge taking out our IT systems. So we know what happened, we just need to find out why,” the airline said in a statement.

“It was not an IT failure and had nothing to do with outsourcing of IT, it was an electrical power supply which was interrupted.

“We are undertaking an exhaustive investigation to find out the exact circumstances and most importantly ensure that this can never happen again.”

Some experts predict BA could face a bill of over £100m in compensation costs.

The airline said it will “comply with all of the relevant EU compensation regulations”, including hotel accommodation, transport to and from hotels, meals and telephone calls.

It has added extra staff to its customer relations department to help process payments.

The airline said all of the delayed bags had been processed at Heathrow and were on their way to customers around the world but admitted “it may take some time to complete the process”.

BA’s parent company, IAG, saw shares initially fall by about 4% in the first day of trading in London after the outage occurred.

On Saturday night, travellers spent the night sleeping on yoga mats spread on terminal floors after BA cancelled all flights leaving Heathrow and Gatwick.

BA’s chief executive, Alex Cruz, said the outsourcing of jobs was not to blame for the “catastrophic” power failure.

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