British Airways passengers faced ‘chaos’ at Heathrow Terminal 5 on Wednesday as an IT failure brought long queues at check-in desks and flight cancellations, with disruption possibly continuing today.
The airline apologised to passengers for yesterday’s “systems issue”, which lead to a backlog for passengers and a number of cancellations. BA claims the failure affected a “number of airlines”.
In a separate incident, all carriers experienced disruption as Heathrow’s air traffic control tower was evacuated during a fire alarm. Some flights had to be diverted to other airports while the control tower was out of action.
Although flights are operating today, BA says some “knock on disruption” can be expected. A notice on the airline’s website says it is doing ‘all it can’ to keep problems to a minimum.
Customers are advised to check with BA on the status of their flight before departing for Heathrow.