UK’s largest airline services provide British Airways has made it official that the IT outage which caused a global blackout of the Company’s IT system on Saturday last week was due to a technical snag and not due to a cyber attack.
Reacting to media reports that the snag was caused by a cyber attack launched on the airlines in retaliation for the new law of banning laptops, the firm’s CEO Alex Cruz said that the IT failure was probably caused by an electrical failure in its data center and not due to a cyber attack as reported by few media resources.
On May 27th, 2017, a major IT crash down was reported at the counters operated by British Airways at the airports operating on a global note. The crash down resulted in the cancellation of over 76 flights from Heathrow and Gatwick airports- causing chaos for more than 200,000 holidaymakers.
As the airline’s check-in and operational systems crashed, many flyers who were trying to travel on the bank holiday were left stranded at the airport. As a result, British Airways chose to cancel all flights for the rest of day from Heathrow and Gatwick.
By Sunday evening, most of the counters of British Airlines were brought back to life. However, as most passengers were reporting of missing baggage and rebooking of flights, the airport authorities had a tough time in controlling the crowds.
British Airports CEO Mr. Cruz said that most of the passengers were provided with mats and thin blankets and were asked to rest at some specific corners in the airport.
As per our sources, Flight delays to destinations like the US, Rome, Prague, Milan, Stockholm and Malaga were reported due to log-jam on Saturday.
Some ground staff had to take the help of paper and pen to pass on messages to the pilots who about to fly.
The British Airlines apologized for the inconvenience caused to the passengers and assured that such incidents will never get repeated in future.
