British Airways cancels flights as major IT failure causes worldwide delays

British Airways has cancelled all flights from Heathrow and Gatwick before 6pm on Saturday due to a major IT failure that is causing very severe disruption to its global operations.

The airline said that its terminals at Heathrow and Gatwick had become “extremely congested” due to the computer problems.

It had therefore decided to cancel all flights from both of the UK’s biggest airports before 6pm UK time on Saturday. “Please do not come to the airports,” BA said.

“We are extremely sorry for the inconvenience this is causing our customers and we are working to resolve the situation as quickly as possible.”

Travellers have been told to check ba.com and its Twitter account for updates about the situation.

The IT failure has struck on one of the busiest travelling days of the year in the UK, coinciding with the start of a bank holiday weekend and the half-term break for some schools.

The cause of the issue remained unclear, but passengers on one flight were told by the pilot that the IT problems were “catastrophic”.

BA said there was no evidence a cyber-attack had caused the outage.

The worst disruption affected Terminal 5 at Heathrow airport, BA’s main hub. However, passengers returning from destinations in the US and Europe also suffered lengthy delays, with some sitting in planes on the runway for several hours.

Heathrow airport also responded to the issue saying that the BA website was unavailable and some travellers claimed they could not check in on the mobile app, with many venting their frustration on social media. Others said they had been delayed at the airport or on runways before takeoff.

Melissa Davis was held for more than an hour and a half on the tarmac at Heathrow, on board a BA flight returning from Belfast.

Speaking from the plane, Davis said the air conditioning had been off “so I don’t think we will be going anywhere any time soon”, but added that the passengers had been kept informed by their pilot and given water while they remained seated.

She later said she and others were then told they could not transfer to other flights because “they can’t bring up our details”.

Tail said he had missed his flight to Rome because of the technical problems. “I checked in online using the BA app at 8.15 for my flight at 9.25, then went and had breakfast,” he said. At some point the app restarted and when I went to go through security I couldn’t log in to my booking to get my QR code. This meant I couldn’t go through security, and by the time I’d gone back and forth to various customer service desks the flight had closed.

“I’ve tried to call customer services but their systems are still down so they weren’t able to help me, and they told me it was a worldwide issue.”

It comes a day after passengers at Gatwick airport faced chaotic scenes and long queues due to a baggage system problem. Those taking flights on Friday were forced to travel without their hold bags and were asked to carry any essential items in their hand luggage.

The airport apologised to passengers for the disruption.