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BA investigating IT check-in failure
Two hour outage caused delays and cancellations over the weekend

By Andy McCue

Published: Monday 08 September 2003

British Airways is still investigating the cause of a computer glitch that led to flight delays and cancellations at the weekend.

A problem at the hub of BA's global passenger and baggage-handling systems at Heathrow led to the network going down for two hours on Saturday morning.

Although the problem was fixed quickly it led to check-in delays and 11 flights to European destinations were cancelled, with Heathrow's terminal one the worst affected location.

A BA spokesman told silicon.com: "The actual problem was fixed fairly quickly but it was the knock-on effect out of terminal one with so many short-haul flights going off in quick succession."

IT staff are still examining the outage but the spokesman admitted the airline still has "no idea" what caused it.

"They are going to spend some time looking at this and obviously there will be an investigation," he said.

BA has battled to cut costs since the global collapse in the travel industry following the terrorist attacks in the US and earlier this year revealed it slashed £50m off the IT bill.

But the failure of the check-in system follows closely from wildcat strikes by BA staff over the introduction of a swipe card clocking-in system in July.