British Airways has cancelled all short-haul flights from Heathrow due to “significant” ongoing technical issues.
All of the flag carrier’s departures of this type from the UK’s busiest airport have been suspended until at least midday, the company said.
Customers due to travel later in the day have been advised to check their flight status on the British Airways website before coming to the airport, as the airline anticipates “further disruption during the day”.
While long-haul services at Heathrow and all flights at Gatwick and London City Airport are due to operate as planned, customers could experience some delays, it said.
British Airways flights were hit by major disruption on Friday evening after the airline suffered what it said were “significant technical issues”, with both its website and app appearing to be down – in what is the company’s second outage in 10 days.
The airline said on Saturday morning that customers on cancelled services will be offered a full refund and that all customers booked to travel on short-haul services from Heathrow today can opt to rebook to a later date for free.
“Our teams have been working hard through the night and will continue to do so to resolve the issue as soon as possible,” the company said in a statement. “We advise our customers due to travel today to check ba.com for the latest flight information before coming to the airport.
“We know we have let our customers down and we will do everything we can to make this up to them - but for now our focus is on getting as many customers and flights away as we can.”
The problem is related to a hardware issue and is not because of a cyber attack, the airline said, amid fears that Russian hackers could seek to disrupt British infrastructure in retaliation to the UK’s response to Vladimir Putin’s widely-condemned invasion of Ukraine.
The spy agency GCHQ has been advising organisations in charge of Britain’s critical national infrastructure – including transport and aviation – on the threat of cyber attacks, while home secretary Priti Patel said this week: “As we monitor developments, we will be especially mindful of the potential for cyber attacks and disinformation emanating from Russia.
“Be in no doubt there is work ongoing across government 24/7 to maximise our resilience to any such attacks, which would be met with a suitably robust response.”
Ed Hall, a 54-year-old television executive from Woodstock, Oxfordshire, said he was stranded on a plane for over an hour after touching down at Heathrow Terminal 5 on Friday night because the crew could not access any IT systems to get a stand where passengers could disembark.
There were issues even before his BA 399 flight took off from Brussels, he said, adding: “We couldn't take off as the pilot’s system that calculates weight, loads and distribution went offline and we had to go back to the gate from the runway to get a [manual] copy sent from London.
“BA is running on paper tonight.”
One travel expert warned that the airline must be transparent about what is causing the technical problems.
“Ongoing technical issues don't fill consumers with much confidence,” said Paul Charles, chief executive of travel consultancy The PC Agency.
“Many people have saved up during lockdown to get away at the first opportunity and some are now finding that computers, not Covid, are preventing their getaway. BA needs to be transparent on what's causing these issues and how soon they will be fixed.”
Additional reporting by PA
