Head of BA parent blames human error for bank holiday shutdown

The head of BA’s parent company has insisted that human error, rather than overly aggressive cost-cutting, was the cause of the computer systems shutdown that left 75,000 BA passengers stranded on a holiday weekend and caused severe damage to the reputation of the carrier. Willie Walsh, CE of International Airlines Group, said an engineer had inadvertently switched off the power supply to one of the company data centres and it was then turned back on again in an uncontrolled fashion. An independent investigation would be carried out, he said. “It’s very clear to me that you can make a mistake in disconnecting the power,” he said. “It’s difficult for me to understand how to make a mistake in reconnecting the power.” The electrical engineer is part of a maintenance team that works at Boadicea House, the Heathrow data centre hit by the power outage on Saturday, May 29, according to two people briefed on the situation. The facility has since 2013 been managed by CBRE Global Works Solutions, the US property services company. CBRE said in a statement last week that it supported BA’s investigation into the cause of the power outage. “We are the manager of the facility for our client BA and fully support its investigation. No determination has been made yet regarding the cause of this incident,” the statement said. An email sent by Bill Francis, IAG’s IT chief, last week confirmed that the shut-down had not been caused by IT failure or software issues. His email revealed that an investigation so far had found that an uninterruptible power supply to a core data centre at Heathrow was over-ridden on Saturday morning. Walsh confirmed the main details of the leaked email. Had the power not been turned on again in an uncontrolled manner, he said, the shutdown “was a problem that we could have overcome probably in a couple of hours; I don’t think it would have led to any cancellations”.<br/>