British Airways cancels flights due to technical issue

British Airways (BA) has cancelled and delayed flights into the UK following an unidentified technical issue, with the airline booking customers on alternative flights.

No details of the issue are currently available, but customers on flights from the US and China were among those affected, according to reports.

“We don’t have details on the technical issue, however flights are departing today with delays,” said a spokesperson.

A BA statement said it still expects to operate a full flight schedule today. “There may be some knock-on delays to flights and we are advising customers to check ba.com for the latest flight information,” it added. “​We are sorry for the disruption to customers who have been affected.”

This is the latest IT issue to blight British Airways in recent years of technical difficulties varying in degrees of severity and length.

In August this year, a systems issue affecting BA check-in procedures forced the airline to cancel and delay flights departing from its London airports. The airline did not disclose the exact nature of the problems, which are known to have affected the IT systems governing its check-in and flight departure procedures.

In May 2017, over a bank holiday weekend, a datacentre power supply was established as the root cause of the issues that occurred that time, which resulted in flights being cancelled and delayed over the course of two days, with 75,000 passengers caught up in the disruption.

The airline also suffered a data breach in September 2018, which prompted the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) to hand down its biggest GDRP-related fine to-date in July of £183m.

One Twitter user said: “@British Airways needs to sack its IT team and hire in some competent computer specialists. They are having far too many IT outages. Thousands delayed as BA flights disrupted by ‘technical issues’.”