British Airways apologises for delays and cancellations at Heathrow
Heathrow in 'complete chaos' after British Airways' IT failure
A large number of flights in and out of Heathrow airport have been cancelled or delayed due to an IT glitch. British Airways (BA) has apologised for the IT issues that caused the problem.
Some travellers were stuck in queues for hours and others were sent home after flight cancellations.
The problems, which started yesterday, are ongoing. Terminal 5 in particular suffered very long queue times, with multiple passengers reporting on the situation:
"They just said to me 'Stay in the queue'," one said. "It's not terribly helpful... It's complete chaos."
"We're really not getting any information at the moment. Nobody's being sorted out... They can't re-book the flights because they've got no computer system. Everyone's just sitting here," another added.
In response, British Airways said it had experienced 'systems issues' which had caused the delays and cancellations.
This morning a BA spokesman said: "Our flights are operating today, however we expect some knock-on disruption from yesterday's combination of a temporary closure of Heathrow Airport's air traffic control tower and a supplier system issue which affected a number of airlines.
"We are doing all we can to keep disruption to our services to a minimum, and are sorry for the disruption to our customers' travel plans."
British Airways also released a tweet last night reading: "We are experiencing disruption to our flights as a result of an issue with some of our IT systems. We are working hard to urgently resolve the matter and are sorry for the disruption to some customers' travel plans."
To make the delays even worse for travellers, there was a fire alarm at Heathrow's air traffic control tower yesterday, forcing some flights to redirect to other airports.
This isn't the first time this has happened to BA. In May, another IT failure led to more than 75,000 passengers stranded, grounding hundreds of flights on a Bank Holiday.