Half-term holiday plans for thousands of families were thrown into disarray after British Airways cancelled at least 42 more flights on Friday due to the impact of an IT failure.
Most of the affected flights were on short haul routes to and from Heathrow Airport on what was expected to be the busiest day for UK air travel since before the coronavirus pandemic.
Friday’s chaos was caused by planes and crew being out of position after an IT problem caused around 80 flights to be grounded on Thursday.
Around 16,000 passengers have been affected by the cancellations.
There were also widespread delays to other flights, and some passengers were unable to check in online.
In a message on its website, British Airways told customers: “We’re aware of a technical issue, which we have been working hard to fix.”
It advised passengers to check the status of their flight before going to the airport, adding that it is receiving “high call volumes”.
Heathrow said the problem was not related to a strike by security officers at Terminal 5.
British Airways has suffered a series of IT failures in recent years.
It was forced to cancel flights in the run-up to Christmas 2022 due to a problem with its systems.
Aviation analytics firm Cirium said Friday was expected to see the most departures from UK airports since December 20 2019, with more than 3,000 flights planned.
This is due to many families heading overseas ahead of the half-term school holiday in England and Wales.
A tweet from British Airways at 11.27pm on Thursday said its “systems are back up and running” but there might still be “intermittent issues”.
Customers can receive refunds, re-book or if they have to stay overnight they will be offered meals and hotel accommodation.
One Twitter user, who was at Heathrow at around 7pm on Thursday, said: “Almost all BA flights from LHR T5 (London Heathrow Terminal 5) cancelled tonight. No info. About 4 people on BA desks trying to deal with the chaos.
“Come on BA you can do better than this. You are supposed to be the UK’s flagship.”
