BA flight delays, cancellations hit at Heathrow

A technical problem has caused British Airways passengers to face further delays or cancelation flights at Heathrow heading into the bank holiday weekend.

At least 50 BA flights from the airport were cancelled today, while a large number of inbound flights were delayed for more than an hour.

Passengers were told their flights were delayed Friday evening due to the weather. The airline said passengers should check their flight status before going to the airport on Friday.

A tweet from British Airways on Thursday said systems were back up and running, but there may still be intermittent issues.

The airline said: While the majority of our flights have continued to operate on Thursday, we have had to cancel a number of Heathrow flights due to a technical issue.

The affected customers have been contacted and offered options, including a refund or rebooking to an alternative flight with us or another carrier. We are very sorry to our customers for the inconvenience. On Thursday, queues of passengers seeking assistance formed at Heathrow, with some also unable to check in online. The airline mainly canceled flights to destinations with multiple departures to allow customers to travel.

Almost all BA flights from LHR T 5 have been cancelled, the Twitter user said. About 4 people on BA desks are trying to deal with the chaos. The disruption came as the airline and the airport were working to minimise the fallout from the first day of a three-day strike by security guards at Heathrow who are members of the Unite union. Friday is expected to be the busiest day for departing flights since 2019, according to data from analysts Cirium.

The IT problem is unrelated to the strikes, with Heathrow saying its contingency plans had kept security queues flowing across the airport.

BA has experienced a number of IT failures, including a single in December that led to a number of long-haul cancellations. The most prominent IT incident of 2017 was at the start of a May half-term getaway, when tens of thousands of passengers were stranded after its systems were accidentally turned off.