BA cancels flights from London as global IT outage causes chaos

[rooster59]

BA cancels flights from London as global IT outage causes chaos

By Michael Holden

 

The British Airways logo is seen behind barbed wire at Heathrow Airport, west of London May 24, 2010. REUTERS/Stefan Wermuth/Files

 

LONDON (Reuters) - British Airways cancelled all its flights from London's two biggest airports on Saturday after a global computer system failure caused confusion and chaos, with thousands of passengers queuing for hours and planes left stuck on runways.

 

The failure, caused by a power supply problem, disrupted BA's flight operations worldwide and also hit its call centres and website, said Alex Cruz, the chairman and chief executive of BA, part of Europe's largest airline group IAG.

 

"All of our check-in and operational systems have been affected and we have cancelled all flights from Heathrow and Gatwick for today," Cruz said in a video message on Twitter.

 

"We are extremely sorry for the huge inconvenience this is causing our customers and we understand how frustrating this must be, especially for families hoping to get away on holiday."

 

He said the airline's IT teams were working "tirelessly" to fix the problem and there was no evidence of any cyber attack.

 

The problems, which passengers said had affected flights across Britain, came on a particularly busy weekend with a public holiday on Monday and many children starting their school half-term breaks.

 

Terminals at Heathrow and Gatwick became jammed with angry passengers, with confused BA staff unable to help as they had no access to their computers.

 

"It's a complete nightmare. There's just hundreds and thousands of people accumulating in the departures bit," Roshni Burt, who was flying from Heathrow to Bahrain with her young son, told Reuters.

 

She arrived at the airport at 0730 GMT, queued for hours at the check-in, where the baggage drop-off system stopped working, and then waited at the departure gate for two hours until passengers were told the flight was cancelled.

 

All the affected passengers were corralled through a single gate so they could go back through border checks and then re-book flights.

 

"MASSIVE SCRUM"

 

"We are now in a massive scrum trying to get to this gate. BA staff didn't know what's going on," Burt said. "Border control aren't going to be able to deal with all these people. I don't know what's going to happen."

 

BA is the latest airline to be hit by computer problems. Last month Germany's Lufthansa and Air France suffered a global system outage which prevented them from boarding passengers.

 

In September last year BA apologised to passengers for check-in delays caused by operational glitches that delayed flights at Gatwick and Heathrow, in a repeat of a similar incident that affected London-area flights for the airline last July.

 

In August a power surge near U.S. airline Delta's Atlanta headquarters caused computers to crash and led to widespread delays across Delta's entire network.

 

BA said it would try to get affected customers onto the next available flight although the re-booking process was being hindered by the system problems. Those unable to fly would get a full refund, Cruz said.

 

"We hope to be able to operate some long-haul inbound flights tonight, which will land in London tomorrow," he said. "We are extremely sorry for the inconvenience this is causing our customers during this busy holiday period."

 

Some passengers said they had boarded flights but were then left stuck on the runway.

 

"Still on the tarmac at Leeds. #britishairways reckon Heathrow is so backed up we can't set off. No way we'll make our Vegas flight," one passenger David Raine wrote on Twitter.

 

Another, journalist Martyn Kent, wrote: "Sat on plane at Heathrow for hour and a half now. @British_Airways Captain describes IT problem as 'catastrophic'."

 

Heathrow, one of the world's busiest airports, said in a statement: "We are working closely with the airline to assist passengers who have been affected by the British Airways issue and have extra customer service colleagues in terminals to assist those passengers already at Heathrow,"

 

In February IAG reported its annual operating profit rose 8.6 percent to 2.5 billion euros and said its British Airways transatlantic business, based at Heathrow, had held up well compared with Europe's highly competitive budget market.

 

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2017-05-28

[darksidedog]

The global IT for BA for everything was in one system, so when it crashed they were stuffed everywhere. While I would rather have an IT crash, rather than the plane itself, it does suggest that they need to rethink how there IT systems are operating and have better back ups, to deal with such outages. You know what they say about having all your eggs in one basket.

[brewsterbudgen]

Any reports on the LHR-BKK daily flight?

[lovelomsak]

I hope this comes as a wake up call to the world. The new world of computers envolved with running everything is all dependent on electricity. Shut off the electricity and shut off the whole system. The world is becoming more vulnerable everyday. I just hope it is not to early for people to wake up and see IT is not for what it appears. 

  How long  could things go on without electricity? Not long. After one day even cellphones would stop working with no way for them to be recharge their batteries.The world of great communications would come to a stand still.

  Think about it kids.

Edited May 28, 2017 by lovelomsak

[bannork]

Too true regarding the above comments. I remember someone saying the more we develop technology, the less independent we become. Before calculators and mobile phones, people could remember phone numbers and do calculations in their heads or on paper.

 

[KittenKong]

There's nothing wrong with relying on IT when you have competent IT staff and good back-up systems.

 

BA's problem seems to be related to power supplies in their large offices near Heathrow and so one must assume for now that proper power-supply back-ups were not available for whatever reason.

 

That said, I dont think that I would outsource any critical IT to India if I was running a major western company. I wouldnt have changed the BA tail-fin art back in the 90s either and I have grave doubts about the competency of any management that would do something like that.

[YetAnother]

52 minutes ago, rooster59 said:

caused by a power supply problem

sounds like spin; surely they have backup power

[KhunBENQ]

2 hours ago, brewsterbudgen said:

Any reports on the LHR-BKK daily flight?

Yesterday (27 MAY)

BKK -> LHR (BA 10), landed 92 minutes delay

LHR -> BKK (BA 9) cancelled

Maybe BA 10 was already in the air when the problem occurred.

 

Today 28 MAY

BKK -> LHR (BA 10) cancelled (no surprise)

LHR -> BKK (BA 9) scheduled for 16:00h

 

You can check on the website which is up again.

https://www.britishairways.com/rtad/travel/public/en_gb?source=MNVINF1flight_status

 

(flightstats.com shows wrong data, not updated by BA obviously)

[Briggsy]

This will cost them a huge amount of money.

[KhunBENQ]

1 hour ago, YetAnother said:

they have backup power

If not, it would be very embarrassing.

They write it's a failure in power supply.

Does not sound like simple power outage (which should NEVER bring down such a critical IT center).

Maybe it's more like: power supply is controlled by SW.

If you know what I mean

 

[impulse]

I wonder how much ransom these airlines are paying to to get their systems back up and running?  I'll bet it's a lot.

 

One or two in a year my be coincidence, but this is too many in a row.  

 

Of course, we'd never hear that it's ransom ware, for several reasons.  One reason is not to encourage others to follow suit, because I'm sure it's lucrative.  Another is to protect certain intelligence agencies from the embarrassment of the world finding out it's yet another of their leaked goodies.  So they'd blame it on innocuous causes like power failures, etc.

 

Gosh, I love a good wingnut conspiracy theory...

 

[MobileContent]

Amazing that they have no DRC System and Center running concurrently. 

[alocacoc]

The failure, caused by a power supply problem, disrupted BA's flight operations worldwide and also hit its call centres and website, said Alex Cruz, the chairman and chief executive of BA, part of Europe's largest airline group IAG.

 

Did they host everything on one windows 95 notebook?

 

Methinks, nowadays, IT supporters / departments are completely retarded. First wannacry and now this.

[KhunBENQ]

Some interesting details and critical remarks about BA's IT in this BBC report:

 

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-40069865

 

Quote

The GMB union has suggested the failure could have been avoided, had the airline not outsourced its IT work.

BA denied the claim, saying: "We would never compromise the integrity and security of our IT systems".

Quote

Mick Rix, GMB's national officer for aviation said: "This could have all been avoided.

"BA in 2016 made hundreds of dedicated and loyal IT staff redundant and outsourced the work to India... many viewed the company's actions as just plain greedy."

 

[baboon]

I flew BA a couple of weeks ago for the first time in about a year and a half and was NOT impressed. I used to like them but this time they appeared to me to be an outfit that are really Nickel and Diming on everything. No refreshments on domestic flights unless you are paying for them, small portions of bland food on the Bangkok leg with the bar closed three or four hours into the flight, disgruntled employees... Why would their IT be any different? 

[KhunBENQ]

Their website still suffers.

Just tried to check the flight status again.

404 not found...

 

[Andaman Al]

imagine for a moment the consequences if Kim Jong Un managed to set off an exoatmospheric nuclear detonation with the resulting electromagnetic pulse. What we saw yesterday was just a tiny snippet of the chaos that would ensue. How about a major solar storm resulting in global electromagnetic pulses.

 

As an aside if there were a global disruption (even continental) with many more airlines affected did you know that there is not enough space at airports around the world to accommodate all the aircraft. We can only land about 60% at anyone time after that - no room (I think at anyone time during the 24 hr cycle, 70% of the worlds passenger aircraft are actually airborne). Everything is run by computer now and we have become complacent to the situation that is potentially devastating that lies dormant for now. Ironically the countries that would face least disruption are the 3rd world countries that still rely on paper.

 

The only thing we can do to minimise the effect is to prepare and have built in redundancy. If we had a large solar storm activity start and then we managed to get at best an 8 minute warning of a major solar electromagnetic pulse about to hit earth (or indeed the imminent likely hood of an exoatmospheric blast), what would you do with all your laptops, phones, computers etc? Do you know?

[KhunBENQ]

 I would love to see that this thread stays on topic.

More doomsday/conspiracy posts will be removed without further notice.

[Basil B]

3 hours ago, brewsterbudgen said:

Any reports on the LHR-BKK daily flight?

BA009 was cancelled...

 

I

[Familyonthemove]

Perhaps BA had a Windows update the night before?

 

"Do not switch off your computer or check in any passengers, installing 37 updates that will make your system run slow and crash"

[KhunBENQ]

3 minutes ago, Basil B said:

BA009 was cancelled...

 

I

Yesterday, yes.

(BA website flight status is not accessible at the moment)

[Scott]

5 minutes ago, steven100 said:

good luck with that one ....

Well, we would rather not have to remove a lot of posts and suspend members, but this is a relatively new story and it does have an affect on people who may be traveling or who have family members coming.   People may be looking for information.  

 

There will be time for speculation later, but for now, please stick to the topic and keep the thread reasonably clean.  

[Basil B]

1 minute ago, KhunBENQ said:

For today?

 

Should have departed yesterday... landed BKK today, 

[baboon]

3 minutes ago, Familyonthemove said:

Perhaps BA had a Windows update the night before?

 

"Do not switch off your computer or check in any passengers, installing 37 updates that will make your system run slow and crash"

Hmm. That might be too accurate to be amusing...

[KhunBENQ]

When writing post #8 the BA site was up and showed that todays (28 MAY) flight from LHR to BKK (BA 9) at 16:00h London time will fly.

 

[baboon]

16 minutes ago, Andaman Al said:

imagine for a moment the consequences if Kim Jong Un managed to set off an exoatmospheric nuclear detonation with the resulting electromagnetic pulse. What we saw yesterday was just a tiny snippet of the chaos that would ensue. How about a major solar storm resulting in global electromagnetic pulses.

 

As an aside if there were a global disruption (even continental) with many more airlines affected did you know that there is not enough space at airports around the world to accommodate all the aircraft. We can only land about 60% at anyone time after that - no room (I think at anyone time during the 24 hr cycle, 70% of the worlds passenger aircraft are actually airborne). Everything is run by computer now and we have become complacent to the situation that is potentially devastating that lies dormant for now. Ironically the countries that would face least disruption are the 3rd world countries that still rely on paper.

 

The only thing we can do to minimise the effect is to prepare and have built in redundancy. If we had a large solar storm activity start and then we managed to get at best an 8 minute warning of a major solar electromagnetic pulse about to hit earth (or indeed the imminent likely hood of an exoatmospheric blast), what would you do with all your laptops, phones, computers etc? Do you know?

They could just park up aircraft nose to tail on taxiways, I presume. There might not be enough gates but there is plenty of concrete.

Having paper as a backup for computer failures is a sensible idea, though. That's why it won't happen.

[KhunBENQ]

BA 9, LHR -> BKK is shown as planned on the Heathrow website:

 

http://www.heathrow.com/departures/flight-details/ba009-bangkok-bkk

 

If you browse the Heathrow website you see the mixed picture for BA.

Some flights go, some flights cancelled.

[Basil B]

Quote

BA aims to resume most UK flights after IT failure

British Airways says it is aiming to run a "near normal schedule" at Gatwick and the "majority of services" from Heathrow on Sunday after a "major" IT failure saw all flights cancelled.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-40074751

 

BA should get advice from British Rail on how to handle the problem of having their trains in the wrong place after a service disruption...

 

This is going to take days to sort out.

[Basil B]

I am in the UK only just catching up on the news, as the Beeb is still focused on world news, so much info relates to yesterdays news.

 

Passengers stuck at airports worldwide, passengers stuck on planes at LHR for hours.

 

This could be the final nail in the coffin of BA.

 

[CGW]

49 minutes ago, baboon said:

I flew BA a couple of weeks ago for the first time in about a year and a half and was NOT impressed. I used to like them but this time they appeared to me to be an outfit that are really Nickel and Diming on everything. No refreshments on domestic flights unless you are paying for them, small portions of bland food on the Bangkok leg with the bar closed three or four hours into the flight, disgruntled employees... Why would their IT be any different? 

But! their profits go up! this is the driving and most important factor in any business these days, the corporations and bankers rule! - sad