London : More than a third of British Airways flights from Londons Heathrow Airport have been cancelled, leaving thousands of passengers stranded for the second day today following a major global computer failure for which a workers union blamed outsourcing to India. Sunday departures from Gatwick, Londons other major airport, are delayed, but none have been cancelled. The airline urged people to check the status of flights before travelling to the airport. British Airways had earlier said it plans to resume most of its flights out of Heathrow and Gatwick airports today following major IT system disruption that had grounded planes yesterday.
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We are aiming to operate a near-normal schedule at Gatwick and the majority of services from Heathrow on Sunday,? the airline said. A BA spokesperson added: "We are continuing to work hard to restore all of our IT systems. We are extremely sorry for the huge disruption caused to customers throughout Saturday and understand how frustrating their experiences will have been. "We are refunding or rebooking customers who suffered cancellations on to new services as quickly as possible and have also introduced more flexible rebooking policies for anyone due to travel on Sunday and Monday who no longer wishes to fly to/from Heathrow or Gatwick."
Thousands of passengers had their travel plans disrupted as a result of the problem, with one workers? union blaming the outsourcing of IT jobs to India for the chaos, a claim denied by the airline. "We would never compromise the integrity and security of our IT systems," BA said in reference to GMB union?s claim. BA chief executive Alex Cruz had said it was believed "the root cause [of the computer problems] was a power supply issue". The company said there was no evidence the failure was the result of a cyber attack. The airline is expected to have to pay out huge sums in compensation, including the cost of hotels, transport and meal expenses for stranded passengers. PTI
