British Airways extends London flight cancellations through Saturday amid IT failure

British Airways has yet to fix the IT outage that caused them to cancel all flights at London’s Heathrow and Gatwick airports earlier Saturday. They originally thought they would be back online by about 6pm GMT, but they’ve now acknowledged that operations will remain suspended through the rest of the day.

https://twitter.com/British_Airways/status/868507566896271360

A”major IT system failure that is causing very severe disruption to our flight operations worldwide,” said CEO Alex Cruz in a video statement.  They are offering customers full refunds, if they choose not to rebook their travel.

British Airways is still insisting that a security threat is not the cause of the outage. “We believe the root cause was a power-supply issue and we have no evidence of any cyberattack,” said Cruz.
A major airline in a major city canceling all its flights has undoubtedly caused chaos at the airports. Distressed travelers took to Twitter to vent.
It’s somehow the sixth IT failure that British Airways has had in the past year, TechCrunch’s Mike Butcher pointed out.
While it doesn’t appear to be a security breach, it shows just how much damage could be done if there’s ever a cyber attack on a major airline.