British Airways Chaos Was Caused by the Power Being Unplugged

During the Spring Bank Holiday towards the end of May, British Airways flights were cancelled from Heathrow and Gatwick due to a “major IT system failure”. It turns out that “major IT system failure” was actually a server’s power cord being unplugged in BA’s main data centre.

A single contractor accidentally switching the power to a server off caused over 75,000 passengers to miss flights.

This leaves us with a lot of questions such as why British Airways wasn’t prepared for such a simple scenario. Shortly after the disruption, people accused the airline company of cost-cutting by outsourcing their IT jobs and using this as evidence of such a decision.

According to The Guardian BA faces a compensation bill upwards of £100 million for the disruption caused to travellers.

It pays to make sure you have a contingency plan in the event of a server failure, especially when your customers are holiday makers.