British Airways IT failure hits UK holidaymakers

The IAG-owned airline said it was reverting to manual check-in systems as it cancelled at least 91 flights from Heathrow and Gatwick airports, as well as delaying over 200 more across the UK after a computer failure on Wednesday disrupted its online check-in system.

"We are experiencing some systems problems this morning which are affecting check-in and flight departures. Please check ba.com and manage my booking for the latest flight information and allow extra time at the airport," a BA spokesperson said, adding that the problem was not global.

The majority of flights affected were short-haul and the airline said it will be offering customers booked on short-haul flights departing from Heathrow, Gatwick and London City the opportunity to book their flights for another day.

BA flights were already among the 177 cancelled and then reinstated on Monday and Tuesday in preparation for strikes by staff at Heathrow over low pay.

The industrial action was due to start at midnight on Monday morning but was suspended to allow further talks between airport management and the union.

BA also faces separate strike action from pilots with a ballot of the pilots’ union Balpa revealing 93% of the airline’s 4,000 pilots voted in favour of industrial action after rejecting a three-year pay deal.

In July the company was fined €200m for a massive customer data breach.

Analysts from RBC Capital Markets said they were increasingly concerned about the successive IT failures from BA, citing a regular stream of reports of disruption with check-in and other systems, problems and repeated glitches with the BA website and app that can see customer bookings lost and card payment failures, and the loss of customer data for which the airline faces a potential €200m fine.

"We think IT management and control at BA is a risk investors can no longer ignore. Other companies, e.g. Carphone Warehouse, RBS and FedEx/TNT have suffered significant shareholder value impact from failure to address IT issues. To us, further continued occurrences would suggest that investors might need to treat IT failure costs not as one-offs, but as an adverse annuity cost - and thus discount achievable IAG share value for this," said analysts.

IAG shares were up 1.23% at 451.70p at 1049 BST.

(Reporting by Duncan Ferris and Frank Prenesti. Editing by Michele Maatouk and Frank Prenesti)