BA has a very large IT infrastructure; it has over 500 data cabinets spread across six halls in two different sites near its Heathrow Waterside HQ.
This time last year, BA tech union reps were pleading with the Home Office airline not to outsource IT jobs to Tata Consultancy Services in India.
Regarding statements from the GMB trade union suggesting there was a link between the current problems and the IT redundancies and the outsourcing of some work to TCS last year, the airline told The Reg: "We would never compromise the integrity and security of our IT systems.
"IT services are now provided globally by a range of suppliers and this is very common practice across all industries" and ... "the UK Government."
Speaking from the airline's operations centre near Heathrow in a Twitter vid, the chief exec said: "Today we have experienced a major IT system failure that is causing very severe disruption to our flight operations worldwide. All of our check-in and operation systems have been affected and we have cancelled all flights from Heathrow and Gatwick for today."
If you're still planning to travel with BA via Gatwick or Heathrow tonight, turn the car around, the message is "don't go" to the airport.
And don't call the call centre either!
"Naturally," said Cruz "many customers have tried to find out more information from our contact centres, but these centres are also hampered by the IT issues."
And don't try to rebook. That functionality is "limited" at the moment, the CEO confirmed.
No comments:
Post a Comment