British Airways passengers left ‘stranded on planes’ as IT error cancels flights and crashes website
FUMING British Airways passengers have slammed the airline after a 'technical issue' led to them being stranded on the tarmac.
Earlier this afternoon, the website and app went down, leaving many unable to check in for their flights.
And passengers are now saying they are unable to leave their planes due to the ongoing IT issue.
One woman said she was stranded at Zurich Airport, as her BA fight was unable to take off for Heathrow.
Another wrote: "Major Systems failure according to our flight crew. 1 hour on taxiway no coaches and likely no baggage."
A third wrote: "Apparently [BA] systems are down again so we don't know what stand to go to and ground crew are all out of position."
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Passenger Rachel said: "Being stuck on the tarmac in Heathrow while your system is down is absurd. Let the planes disembark while you figure out your boarding system."
And Twitter user Tim wrote: "Stranded on the taxiway at Heathrow on BA 278 from San Jose for an hour so far with no prospect of moving due to another IT failure."
A number of British Airways flights have been cancelled up until 6:30pm, with domestic and European flights affected.
This includes:
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- Amsterdam
- Barcelona
- Hamburg
- Paris
- Dusseldorf
- Stuttgart
- Nice
- Marseille
- Luxembourg
- Milan
- Naples
Travellers trying to login to their accounts earlier were told they were not able to due to upgrades on the system.
According to DownDetector, hundreds of people reported an outage since earlier this afternoon.
People trying to use the British Airways website were told: "There is currently no access to your account while we upgrade our system."
A later response read: "We're sorry but ba.com is very busy at the moment and couldn't deal with your request.
"Please do try again - if it still doesn't work, it may be better to try again at another time."
Angry passengers took to social media to complain, saying they were unable to check into for their flights.
Maison said: "I'm trying to check in but both mobile app and main Web page state it's not possible! It states you are very busy!"
Another said: "Can't change my flight because the website is down. I asked if it's not back up before my flight what happens and they tell me I will go down as a no show because I should have changed it two days ago?"
A third said they had been trying to "check in for hours" to no avail.
A British Airways spokesperson told Sun Online Travel: "Our teams are working hard to resolve a technical issue that we've experienced this afternoon.
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"We apologise for the inconvenience and thank our customers for their patience."
However, they said flights are unaffected and passengers can check in at the airport.
