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British Airways IT Systems Fail Again

Aug. 02, 2017
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2 min read
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British Airways IT Systems Fail Again
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For the seventh time this year, British Airways' IT systems failed Wednesday morning, causing disruption for thousands of passengers at London's Heathrow (LHR) and Gatwick (LGW) airports.

The system causing the disruption is known as "FLY" — a ground-based system used by BA staff that processes passenger information, check-in details, baggage tracking and more. FLY was rolled out softly over the carrier's network (meaning it was only implemented on a portion of flights initially) in an attempt to minimize disruption in case the system failed. However, after it was implemented, I experienced four flight cancellations as a direct result of FLY system failures, according to what BA ground staff told TPG.

Earlier this morning, passengers took to twitter to complain about the latest glitch, canceled flights and long lines at British Airways home at Heathrow T5.

It's been about a year since FLY was initially rolled out, so now it's the only ground-based IT system across BA's entire network. So, when something goes wrong (and it often does), the impact is much more widespread. This is the latest episode in a string of high-profile IT failures the London-based carrier and its passengers have had to deal with. Just two months ago, BA's IT systems failed and it led to the cancellation of around 700 flights from LHR and LGW. It was later revealed that the massive outage was caused by a worker inadvertently disconnecting a power supply.

Were you affected by BA's latest IT failure?

Featured image by Nick Morrish/British Airways

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