British Airways says some service returning after day of chaos

  30 May 2017    Read: 1584
British Airways says some service returning after day of chaos
British Airways is planning to have a "near normal schedule" out of Gatwick airport Sunday after it was forced to cancel Saturday flights out of London's two biggest airports.
A "major IT system failure" caused severe disruption to the airline's flight operations worldwide, leaving thousands of passengers stranded.

On Sunday, the airline said that it would aim to resume flights from Gatwick as well as the "majority" of services from Heathrow.

It also said it would refund those who suffered cancellations and no longer wanted to fly to and from the affected airports.

"Although some of the IT systems have returned, there will be some knock-on disruption to our schedules as aircraft and crews are out of position around the world," the airline said in a statement on its Facebook page Sunday.

It asked travelers not to go to Gatwick or Heathrow unless they are confirmed for travel.

"We are repositioning some aircraft during the night to enable us to operate as much of our schedule as possible throughout Sunday," the airline said.

"At this stage we are aiming to operate a near normal schedule of flights from Gatwick and the majority of our Heathrow services.

British Airways has extended its flexible booking policy and says customers can rebook their flights to travel up to and including June 10.

On Saturday, British Airways CEO Alex Cruz posted a video on Twitter in which he said he believed the cause of the problem to be a power supply issue.

He also rejected any notion that the airline had been the subject of a cyberattack.

The airline had initially canceled only flights before 1 p.m. ET (6 p.m. BST) at Heathrow and Gatwick.

Travelers in the United Kingdom were already reporting disruptions, including baggage and flight delays, when the airline reported serious computer problems around midday Saturday.

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