With winds up to 90 mph and a month’s rainfall in a 48-hour period, conditions at Heathrow Airport were already precarious for the half-term holiday weekend with the cancelation of hundreds of flights when, on Sunday, the airport was hit with a major system failure for check-ins and provision of flight information which caused further cancellations and delays at all terminals. Automated baggage operations were also affected by the glitch.
British Airways was hit particularly hard by what was the second technical foul-up the carrier had witnessed in six months after a glitch involving online check-ins and flight departures caused the cancellation of over 100 flights and delay of a further 200 last August. On Sunday, 73 arrivals and 60 departures from various carriers were canceled. Today, Monday February 17, a Heathrow spokesman confirmed that: “Following yesterday’s technical issue, Heathrow’s systems are stable, and the airport is operating as normal. We apologize for the inconvenience this caused our passengers. Our teams continue to closely monitor our systems and will be on hand across our terminals to provide assistance to passengers.”
However, there was still a knock-on effect from Sunday’s problems, the result being a further 58 cancellations of arrivals and the grounding of 30 outgoing flights, all of which were operated by British Airways.
