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Thousands Disrupted as British Airways Flights Axed Amid IT Crash

posted by on Sunday May 28 2017, @09:11AM   Printer-friendly
from the chaos-is-always-one-crash-away dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Serious problems with British Airways' IT systems have led to thousands of passengers having their plans disrupted, after all flights from Heathrow and Gatwick were cancelled.

Passengers described "chaotic" scenes at the airports, with some criticising BA for a lack of information.

The airline has apologised, and told passengers not to come to the airport.

BA chief executive Alex Cruz said: "We believe the root cause was a power supply issue."

In a video statement released via Twitter, he added: "I am really sorry we don't have better news as yet, but I can assure you our teams are working as hard as they can to resolve these issues."

Mr Cruz said there was no evidence the computer problems were the result of a cyber attack.

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by anubi on Sunday May 28 2017, @09:31AM (3 children)

    by anubi (2828) on Sunday May 28 2017, @09:31AM (#516694) Journal

    They may have well outsourced their hardware engineers too.

    --
    "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
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  • (Score: 3, Touché) by c0lo on Sunday May 28 2017, @10:35AM (2 children)

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Sunday May 28 2017, @10:35AM (#516703) Journal

    They may have well outsourced their hardware engineers too.

    In the same country, known for its reliable power [wikipedia.org]?

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford

    • (Score: 2) by tomtomtom on Sunday May 28 2017, @11:49AM (1 child)

      by tomtomtom (340) on Sunday May 28 2017, @11:49AM (#516713)

      If their site is large enough to have its own substation (which seems pretty likely), then they likely have a significant single point of failure right there. Substations do fail reasonably frequently and the effects can be surprising - for example I have personally lost water supply for c.1 day as a result of such a failure previously - and a water pumping station is reasonably simple to cold start. Even if they had a backup substation it would be likely to be fed from the same part of the national grid (it is very expensive to get national grid to install a backup spur from a separate part of the network if its even possible) so there is still an issue of single point of failure potentially.

      • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Sunday May 28 2017, @01:45PM

        by kaszz (4211) on Sunday May 28 2017, @01:45PM (#516738) Journal

        The solution is usually diesel-generator backup.

        But oh.. that cost money. Can't have the 20M$ yacht then.. horror!