Not to much info at the moment.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-40069865

problems reported at serveral locations.

Unless you are flying with BA, I really wouldn't worry! Move along, nothing to see here!

LHR seems to be a mess. Boarding gates displayed incorrectly, people sitting on landed flights but can't disembark. Significant delays reported. Apparently the data server got struck by lightning.

And the website is down.

https://www.britishairways.com/travel/home/public

Do they run their website off Geocities or something?

It's amazing how so much is dependent on a bit of technology.

smokeybandit wrote:

Do they run their website off Geocities or something?

Very witty, but the reason the website doesn't work is because the entire company reservation system behind it is down, or at least can't be accessed either from the website or directly by BA staff at airports. So is their version of Altea's Fly which handles check-in, boarding and despatch, so is the engineering system....
That's why they've gone to manual check-in, manual boarding, and manual manifests. The website is the least of their worries.

Yeah, perhaps we need to go back to these.

British Airways passengers are facing delays and long waits as the airline says it is experiencing a "global system outage".

The airline has apologised to passengers, saying it is "working to resolve the problem as quickly as possible".

Passengers on social media are reporting long delays and flights being held on runways.

Some say they have been unable to check-in using the mobile app, and some said they missed their flights because of the technical problems.

The disruption comes at the start of a bank holiday weekend and during half-term school holidays.

Still on the tarmac at Leeds. #britishairways reckon Heathrow is so backed up we can't set off. No way we'll make our Vegas flight




One passenger, David Raine, tweeted: "Still on the tarmac at Leeds. #britishairways reckon Heathrow is so backed up we can't set off. No way we'll make our Vegas flight."

Another one, Henry Tail, wrote: "Hey @British_Airways, couldn't log in to the app with my boarding pass on because systems were down and I missed my flight. What can I do?"

Mr Tail, who had been booked on a flight to Rome, told Press Association: "I checked in online using the BA app at 8.15 for my flight at 9.25, then went and had breakfast.

"At some point the app restarted and when I went to go through security I couldn't log in to my booking to get my QR code.

"This meant I couldn't go through security, and by the time I'd gone back and forth to various customer service desks the flight had closed," he said.

"I've tried to call customer services but their systems are still down so they weren't able to help me, and they told me it was a worldwide issue."

The airline has experienced problems with its online check-in systems in the past.

http://news.sky.com/story/ba-passengers ... n-10894862

"Apparently the data server got struck by lightning".

Like they really keep their servers in the open air!

This does look really bad. It seems far worse than anything BA has experienced in recent times.

Well, if the area near the building where the servers are housed got struck with lightning and fried the power circuitry to the servers, it's plausable...still...do they not have redundancy?

AWACSooner wrote:

still...do they not have redundancy?

Of course not, I mean these are airlines we're talking about after all

Andy33 wrote:

smokeybandit wrote:

Do they run their website off Geocities or something?

Very witty, but the reason the website doesn't work is because the entire company reservation system behind it is down, or at least can't be accessed either from the website or directly by BA staff at airports. So is their version of Altea's Fly which handles check-in, boarding and despatch, so is the engineering system....
That's why they've gone to manual check-in, manual boarding, and manual manifests. The website is the least of their worries.

Their website should not be down just because the reservation system is down. Actually their website is "up" just there is no content. So some server upstream is handling the traffic, just has nothing to serve up.

All flights from LHR and LGW cancelled up to 6pm.

LHRFlyer wrote:

All flights from LHR and LGW cancelled up to 6pm.

That can't be right exactly right, I'm looking out my window and have literally just seen a BA plane climbing.

EDIT: Seems that that was the very last flight sneaking through.

EDIT 2: BA announcing - "the BBC News is totally false in reporting that all flights have been cancelled until 6pm, and all flights will be going, we just don't know when".

LHRFlyer wrote:

All flights from LHR and LGW cancelled up to 6pm.

OMG, that is really going to hurt so many people around the globe, the knock on !

Why are non BA ops at LHR and LGW affected?

It's been a long time since BA has proactively cancelled its entire flying programme but so this must be a very serious issue.

God help anyone who ever wants to see their suitcase again !

Nope, looks like BA are flying. Just saw the LHR - DEL BA 787 climbing.

KTPAFlyer wrote:

Why are non BA ops at LHR and LGW affected?

I imagine that it's simply that at LHR and LGW trying to deal with the volume of passengers affected is just too complicated -and it's easier to cancel the lot of flights and tell people to go home or sort out a change of itinerary by themselves (when systems allow!)
At all other stations the handling agents should be able to better cope with delays and reacommodation of the few flights that they handle.

ZeeZoo wrote:

Nope, looks like BA are flying. Just saw the LHR - DEL BA 787 climbing.

Flights that were already boarded will continue -of course! But watch as the BA's take off become even fewer and further between over the next few minutes -and so for hours.
What a mess -it's like Brexit's come early.

ZeeZoo wrote:

Nope, looks like BA are flying. Just saw the LHR - DEL BA 787 climbing.

As was said earlier if the flight is boarded will take off - however the BA website is now showing everything before 1800 as cancelled with a press release to that effect as well.

What the hell has it got to do with Brexit? It's likely poor IT security/up keep.

Now reports of it being a cyber attack, not lightning

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/3663439/b ... r-systems/

Not a good day for BA, and this weekend is pretty bad timing for a glitch as the May Bank Holiday is one of the busiest travel weekend of the year in the UK

The BBC is running a "live reporting" thread.

http://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-40069977

Still a lot of large aircraft in the air due to arrive soon, LAX, SAN, LAS, guess the ramp will be on overtime shuffling planes around to free up a gate.

Staff can't even log into their intranet which is pretty telling. Crew with departures before 6pm being told to not even come to the airport.
This is going to be messy.

G-CIVP wrote:

Unless you are flying with BA, I really wouldn't worry! Move along, nothing to see here!

Are you kidding? This is a major meltdown, all flights cancelled from LHR and LGW until 6pm. Reports are LHR T5 in absolute chaos, people can't get their bags, there is a 3 hour queue to even leave T5 airside and go home. It's crazy.

Nothing to see here indeed

KTPAFlyer wrote:

Why are non BA ops at LHR and LGW affected?

Because the gates they should be using are still in use by BA. They should have departed, but didn't.

I wonder how this is going to affect the image of BA in the long term. They weren't doing that good lately already with a declining service level and now this happens to them. No doubt it'll cost them market share.

Three hour wait to get back from air side to land side if your flights cancelled.

Passengers on social media are reporting long delays and flights being held on runways.

I guess than every airline would be affected and all the world airport's would be shut down if they were stuck on the runways. Ugh I wish people would get a grip, and learn what a runway actually is. It's a ramp or possibly a taxiway they were stuck on

BA finally got a plane in the air. G-VIIP departed LGW-TPA BA2167, Scheduled 11:35 actual 15:42. Hope those people were not sitting on that plane all this time.

readytotaxi wrote:

BA finally got a plane in the air. G-VIIP departed LGW-TPA BA2167, Scheduled 11:35 actual 15:42. Hope those people were not sitting on that plane all this time.

Some nice compo though .

I'm certain that investigations will reveal that BA outsourced some of its IT resources to some cousins elsewhere in the world who are famous for such IT meltdowns, this just does not happen on the other side of the pond....oops let the cat out...Miss the smilies

We have support travelling to NAS from LHR tomorrow, hopefully they will have some order restored this evening allowing operations to start getting back on track tomorrow.

BA say all flights for rest of today cancelled.

Landing BA aircraft are now being parked up on the southern taxiiway, VIP and cargo areas.

Could this 'IT failure' be the result of a credible threat against BA?

Can anyone explain why there planes sitting on the taxiway for hours on end?

Surely they can reposition jets on some of the gates to allow for disembarking?

Thank you!

uta999 wrote:

Landing BA aircraft are now being parked up on the southern taxiiway, VIP and cargo areas.

Could this 'IT failure' be the result of a credible threat against BA?

Yeah, I'm seeing on FR24 the MEX-LHR jet has been parked for 3+ hours now...

OA260 wrote:

readytotaxi wrote:

BA finally got a plane in the air. G-VIIP departed LGW-TPA BA2167, Scheduled 11:35 actual 15:42. Hope those people were not sitting on that plane all this time.

Some nice compo though .

Yes, 600 euros each for a 4hr delay.

And now they have cancelled all flights for the rest of the day, Wow.
Take the system down and cold boot, see what comes up. In my last company these crashes happened after a "system enhancement" was applied overnight, wonder if?
Now this backlog and luggage nightmare is just starting, many days to go before the dust settles.
Has anyone noticed on the tweets and Facebook pages the almost total lack of BA staff to be seen walking the lines offering customer service.I know it's human nature not to put yourself in the firing line but they did take their monies.

Another plane up BA235 LHR-DME A321 left 22 min ago scheduled 10:55 actual 16:32

Some more pics here of the chaos. Hundreds of bags left not sure if they are being guarded or not.


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... elays.html

It's pretty bad that there is no notice on the main BA web site about the flights being cancelled for the rest of the day. That is not good at all for the casual person who may not be reading or seeing the news.

I wonder are they able to rebook passengers onto other airlines? Because this procedure relies on the IT system too?

LXSWISS wrote:

Another plane up BA235 LHR-DME A321 left 22 min ago scheduled 10:55 actual 16:32

Not too surprising. I was on a delayed flight from LED-LHR on BA once and they actually got permission to land us at Heathrow after the curfew. The flight was delayed quite some time by a technical issue.

Your Visa in Russia runs out the day you depart, so if your flight delay pushes you into the next day it is a whole lot of pain for overstaying for everyone including the crew. I'd say that is why the flight to DME has gone out.

musapapaya wrote:

I wonder are they able to rebook passengers onto other airlines? Because this procedure relies on the IT system too?

Problem is that they can't verify the bookings. Anyone can show up at their desk and claim they have a booking to a certain destination. BA can't check if that's true or not, so before you know it they'd be handing out free flights.

Better wait until the system is up again and then see how they're going to get everyone to their destinations.

Nothing about it on their website. Didn't I read a few months ago that they retrenched a large number of IT staff in a cost cutting exercise? Maybe these were the ones who were setting up the contingency plans for major outages - perhaps a false economy?

I bet BA has been on the phone to Titan Airways for some backup.