The news follows reports of luggage piling up and extensive delays
Due to ongoing technical issues, all of British Airways’ short-haul flights departing from London’s Heathrow Airport have been cancelled, with the airline revealing that it “anticipated further disruption during the day”.
Reports from the airline and multiple outlets suggest that this ongoing cancellation of short-haul flights will continue until at least midday on Saturday, February 26 – however all long-haul flights are expected to depart as planned.
Flights departing from London’s Gatwick and London City Airport are all expected to leave as scheduled too, however the flight operator has recommended that anyone due to fly later today check their flight status before arriving at the airport.
According to Heathrow, the airport is working with British Airways to resolve this issue, which is reported to have started on Friday, impacting the airlines’s website and mobile app and leaving customers unable to book flights or check-in online before departure.
“We are extremely sorry that due to the continuing technical issues we are facing we have regrettably had to cancel all short-haul flights from Heathrow today until midday,” explained British Airways in an official statement.
“We are offering customers on cancelled services options including a full refund and all customers booked to travel on short-haul services from Heathrow today can opt to rebook to a later date for free if they choose.
“We will be contacting customers proactively.”
Meanwhile, these ongoing delays have unsurprisingly left customers quite irritated, especially after British Airways experienced problems loading and unloading luggage just last week due to ongoing stormy weather. As a result, the airline apologised to customers for “letting people down”.
“We couldn’t take off as the pilot’s system that calculates weight, loads and distribution went offline and we had to go back to the gate from the runway to get a (manual) copy sent from London,” said 54-year-old TV executive Ed Hall, explaining how he was stuck on a plane for longer than an hour after he arrived into London from Brussels yesterday.
“BA is running on paper”, he added angrily, before detailing how luggage from customers stuck on other flights continued to pile up when he finally managed to leave the plane.
Likewise, Londoner Sophia Prout, 33, told PA News about how “frustrating” these technical issues were after she was forced to wait for a whopping five hours to board her flight – despite arriving earlier than necessary because online check-in was unavailable.
“We’re lucky that we can turn around and go home if the flight gets cancelled,” she said, “but would be nice to get an idea of when/if we will take off.”
Related links:
- British Airways cancels flights to US after 5G concerns
- British Airways pilots told not to address passengers as ‘ladies and gentlemen’
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