British Airways chief executive Sean Doyle has told staffers that an IT outage on Monday evening that grounded flights and took down the airline’s website and phone lines is proof that its £750 million in new computer infrastructure is beginning to work.
In an internal memo, Doyle said that a similar outage only a couple of years ago would have resulted in a days-long operational meltdown that would have stranded tens of thousands of passengers.
On Monday evening, however, a backup system “kicked in” just over an hour after the outage was first reported at 5:10 pm, with priority operational systems first brought back online before other systems, like BA’s bug-ridden website, restored at 7:45 pm.
“Our systems data shows the outage itself lasted 95 minutes,” Doyle wrote. “Our backup network kicked in as per our business contingency plans and we were then able to calculate and distribute load sheets and flight plans.”
As the outage unfolded on Monday evening, passengers took to social media to complain about being stuck on British Airways aircraft as pilots struggled to get in touch with their own airline.
Burt Doyle says the outage could have been a lot worse if it hadn’t been for recent upgrades to the airline’s antiquated IT infrastructure.
“We never want to inconvenience you or your customers, and what happened last night was very frustrating,” Doyle wrote. “However, we wanted to reassure you that as a result of our investment in upgrading our systems, we’ve seen a step change in the number of outages occurring and our response to these.”
“What we saw last night was that our investment in our ability to recover our IT systems is making a difference. We’re steadily increasing resilience, and we’re recovering from these issues more quickly.”
Doyle congratulated employees for managing to get every mainline flight away as scheduled without a single cancellation despite the outage.
“We don’t suggest this is ideal – far from it – but every time we experience these issues, our response gets better,” the memo continued. “IT issues affect all companies. What matters is how quickly we respond when they do happen to limit the impact on customers.”
Doyle did not say what caused the outage and did not rule out a potential cyber attack.
Along with moving the airline’s IT infrastructure, the multi-million-pound investment is being used to create a new website and mobile app that should provide customers with more self-service facilities.
British Airways is also investing in new IT merchandising, allowing it to price flights dynamically and add-ons like never before.
In recent weeks, British Airways has been forced to ground a slew of flights due to ongoing issues with Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 engines that power the airline’s Boeing 787 Dreamliner fleet.
British Airways intends to temporarily abandon Bahrain and Kuwait as a result of ongoing issues, which will mean the closure of a cabin crew base and the termination of veteran crew members.
The airline is also abandoning Dallas Fort Worth starting next summer, slashing the number of flights it operates to Miami and curtailing services to Beijing.
Experts believe the reduction in capacity could result in record-high airfares next year.
Mateusz Maszczynski honed his skills as an international flight attendant at the most prominent airline in the Middle East and has been flying ever since... most recently for a well known European airline. Matt is passionate about the aviation industry and has become an expert in passenger experience and human-centric stories. Always keeping an ear close to the ground, Matt's industry insights, analysis and news coverage is frequently relied upon by some of the biggest names in journalism.
…of course it hasn’t occurred to him that having systems that don’t go down at least a dozen times a year would be preferable! Or that announcing an “investment” (catch up on 20years+ of maintenance and upgrades that they haven’t done) over two years ago with zero visible improvements to the customer isn’t good PR…
BA’s marketing is the last remaining piece of excellence int eh organisation but even their PR and Ad’s have stretched most peoples belief so far. I think the board level management actually believe their own lies and cynically don’t feel they need to effect any real world improvements as long as they have “fortress Heathrow” & are able to supress competition and profiteer from a captive audience. Certainly in an open market, not only would they not be making record profits but would be in real financial trouble.
Best Avoided whenever possible!
“Doyle congratulated employees for managing to get every mainline flight away as scheduled”
This is simply untrue flights may have departed eventually but all that hadn’t taken off had delays.
“your customers” says it when he doesn’t see them as “our” customers.