A British Airways flight leaves Heathrow (file photo)
(Picture: Heathrow Airport)British Airways has apologised for an issue which delayed some passengers for hours on flights departing the US.
The airline said "a technical issue with a third-party flight planning supplier" was the reason for the delays for customers on Monday night.
The apology comes after some passengers reported hearing multiple alarms sounding at once at JFK Airport in New York while waiting in departures to fly to the UK.
A British Airways (BA) statement, released on Tuesday morning, said: “Our teams have now resolved a temporary issue that affected some of our long-haul flight planning systems overnight, which resulted in delays to our schedule. We're sorry for the disruption caused to our customers' travel plans.”
Passengers made their feelings known on Twitter, with one writing: “All fun and games at JFK. All British Airways flights grounded due to an error with their flight mapping system and now we have multiple alarms going off in departures.”
Captain of our @British_Airways flight just said that their flight computers have been down for two hours worldwide and no BA plane can file a flight plan? Seems not ideal. Anyway just chillin’ on the tarmac here at JFK, being cool
— Colin Dickey (@colindickey) December 20, 2022
Colin Dickey added: “Captain of our British Airways flight just said that their flight computers have been down for two hours worldwide and no BA plane can file a flight plan? Seems not ideal."
Others said there had been little in the way of any announcement or confirmation while waiting at the airport.
On Twitter, Nick Higgs wrote that his flight had not been officially cancelled meaning passengers could not go to a hotel.
Midnight and we can't go to a hotel because BA @British_Airways won't officially cancel the flight. We don't know when the flight will leave and there's a plane full of people that they flew from Cayman *after* this meltdown started who will spend the night in the plane! pic.twitter.com/WpYOiXeZlX
— Nick D Higgs (@BahaNick) December 20, 2022
He added: “We don't know when the flight will leave and there's a plane full of people that they flew from Cayman *after* this meltdown started who will spend the night in the plane!”
