BA brought down to earth by latest IT failure

BA’s first A350-1000, one of the world’s most advanced passenger jets, took to the skies on its inaugural flight on Monday. The A350, coupled with BA’s widely-praised new-look business class cabins, promised to chart an upward course for the airline in its centenary year. The triumph, however, has proved to be shortlived. Less than 48 hours later, BA was under fire as thousands of holidaymakers were left stranded or delayed at three London airports after a glitch in the airline’s check-in and departure systems forced it to cancel dozens of flights. BA had managed to resolve the issue by late afternoon on Wednesday but the incident has again raised questions over the company’s management of its IT. After a major data breach last year and a severe systems failure in 2017, it is another IT glitch under Alex Cruz, who became BA’s CE in April 2016. “[Since] the well-received launch of their new A350 product earlier this week things have changed quickly for BA and it will be remembered for another summer when they are across the newspaper pages for the wrong reasons and where again the cause is an IT failure,” said Chris Tarry of aviation consultancy CTAIRA. Their core operations, like reservations and flight scheduling, are based on deep legacy systems that few, if any, of their IT staff understand. BA said on Thursday it was still investigating the cause of the problem but confirmed it was unrelated to the 2017 IT issue or the hack. Some in the industry have complained that BA’s decision to outsource some of its IT work to India under a deal with Tata Consultancy Services in 2016, which came under fire from the unions at the time, had contributed to its technical problems. Long-term company watchers said the latest incident highlighted the airline’s challenge of laying new or even outsourced technology on to old legacy systems — a problem by no means unique to BA or the aviation industry.<br/>