Posted on 05/29/2017 10:31:18 AM PDT by Lorianne
A catastrophic computer outage crippled one of the world’s busiest flight hubs on Saturday, forcing British Airways to cancel all flights out of two London airports, leaving terminals in chaos and passengers stranded.
“Today, we have experienced a major IT system failure that is causing very severe disruptions to our flight operations worldwide,” British Airways chief executive Alex Cruz said in a video message, as reports spread of errors on its website, ticket machines, baggage terminals and technical infrastructure.
Cruz wore a yellow safety vest as he spoke near Heathrow Airport — Europe’s busiest airport and major hub — where baggage piled on the floor and gate information had to be written on a whiteboard. British Airways canceled all departures at Heathrow and at nearby Gatwick Airport. Flights were supposed to resume Saturday evening, but the airline later announced that none of its planes would leave the airports before Sunday.
One passenger told the Associated Press she couldn’t transfer to another flight because “they can’t bring up our details.”
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Related:
British Airways tells angry passengers to leave airports without their
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/british-airways-it-failure-leave-airports-luggage-heathrow-terminal-5-gatwick-a7759381.html
British Airways cancels all flights from 2 London airports amid global computer outage
http://abcnews.go.com/International/british-airways-cancels-flights-london-airports-amid-global/story?id=47678092
British Airways still hobbled with tech cancellations
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/05/28/british-airways-tech-cancellations/102261260/?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzRss&utm_campaign=usatoday-newstopstories
So what are people doing? Are planes still coming in?
Good. If judges are legislating from the bench preventing the Trump blockade from terrorist countries. This will suffice.
British Airways is no longer British, having been bought by a Spanish company.
Last year, the new CEO decided it would be a great cost-saving measure to outsource their IT to India. Right now, it really looks like having their IT people in India, when their physical data center is in England, may not have been the best idea.
Why a modern company has so little redundancy in its critical IT infrastructure, is yet to be explained.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/3669536/british-airway-it-failure-outsourced-staff/
Source told The Sun that problem could have been avoided had staff kick-started back-up system sooner
...
A second source close to Britain's national carrier told The Sun: "BA have had six major IT failures in 12 months, 12 months since outsourcing their IT....
Big surprise.
Do they share Windows XP computers with the British Health Service?
On the plus side, moozlums can’t continue pouring into GB by Brit Air. That’s something.
I work at a Fortune 100 company and we outsourced our IT help desk to India and Phillipines. I used to always ask the person I was talking to where they were. This last time the very helpful guy answered Michigan. I asked what happened and he said they are the replacement company. Thank God...while the foreigners might be able to speak English they didn’t always understand context. It was maddening and time consuming and sometimes useless.
Now if we could just get our AP dept back from India...
“Good. If judges are legislating from the bench preventing the Trump blockade from terrorist countries. This will suffice.”
LOL - it does work as a Muslim ban from a country with a big problem over there. I wonder if a federal judge will order British Airways to start flying again, or at least buy tickets for their Muslim passengers on other airlines.
Redundancy costs money, and it’s a guaranteed expense.
Failures are even more expensive, but they’re not guaranteed in the short term.
Roll the dice, hope you get lucky and collect your quarterly bonus.
They should have learned their lesson by now! IT is almost everything to an airline.
That's a major problem with CEO compensation. If they do well, they get a bonus. If things go badly, they might not get a bonus, but they don't LOSE money.
That vintage ad makes me feel old
Now, every Radio Shack I see says “Going out of business. Closing doors”.
They may have one left in stock! Better hurry!
“Now if we could just get our AP dept back from India...”
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Then Chuck and Tammy would be out of work. :-)
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