British Airways flights grounded by another IT outage

Online check-in and departure systems out of action following second IT failure in two years

Holidaymakers travelling with British Airways have been left stranded at UK airports after the IT systems that deal with check-in and departures failed.

The airline said it has switched to manual systems while the incident, which is not thought to be global, is investigated. In the meantime, passengers face severe delays — around half of British Airways flights scheduled to depart from Heathrow Terminal 5 this morning were cancelled or delayed.

The airline said in a statement:

“We are experiencing some systems problems this morning which are affecting check-in and flight departures.

“Please check ba.com and manage my booking for the latest flight information and allow extra time at the airport.”

The airline said the outage is not global and has only affected two systems. One is the system that processes online check in and the other handles flight departures. It appears one of these systems provides British Airways pilots with important flight details, as one holidaymaker told the BBC their flight could not depart as the “pilot can’t get data”.

It is not the first time the airline has been crippled by an IT failure that grounded passengers worldwide. In 2017 a data centre failure forced the airline to cancel 672 flights during a Bank Holiday Weekend, which reportedly cost the airline £58 million. British Airways sued CBRE over the incident, which was reportedly caused by a power outage.