British Airways: Chaos with flights – Long delays due to technical problem

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Airline battles to restore flight planning systems, putting many’s Christmas holidays on hold

British Airways has apologized to customers after experiencing “a technical problem” with its flight scheduling systems, affecting its flights for the last few hours worldwide.

In a statement, BA said: “We are experiencing delays on some of our flights due to a technical issue with flight scheduling. We regret the disruption to our customers’ journeys, we are investigating the issue so they can travel as soon as possible.”

In an earlier statement overnight it had blamed a “third party design supplier” for the situation.

The issue first came to light when passengers about to depart from the US were “recruited” on social media platforms, resentful of the delays and the lack of information from BA staff they had faced, with many customers saying they had been delayed for hours.

One passenger wrote on Twitter. “All British Airways flights have been grounded due to an error in the flight mapping system and we now have multiple alerts on departures.”

Another said: “The pilot of our British Airways flight has just informed us that the flight computers have been down for two hours worldwide and no BA planes can submit a flight plan.”

BA had nevertheless assured its customers that the technical issues they are not going to affect current flights.

Another passenger complained about the uncertainty of the situation: “It’s midnight and we can’t go to a hotel because BA won’t officially cancel the flight. We don’t know for sure if or when the flight will leave and there’s a plane full of people that flew from the Cayman.”

BA is known for problems with its IT systems. A series of missteps in recent years have hurt the company’s reputation and its recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The latest came in March and caused delays at London’s Heathrow Airport.

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