But with planes and crew left out of position, BA said it had been left with “no choice” but to cancel more than 190 flights from its originally planned schedule. In an update issued at 10am, the airline said: “Our teams have worked throughout the night to build a new flight schedule for today so we’re able to operate as many flights as we can, following the significant disruption we experienced yesterday as a result of the NATS outage. With so many planes and crew out of place, we’re left with no choice but to cancel more than 190 flights of our original planned schedule.” BA said the disruption had affected tens of thousands of its customers across Tuesday and Wednesday and apologised to those caught up in the chaos.
It added: “While this incident has been completely outside of our control, we do not underestimate the impact it’s had on the tens of thousands of our customers who faced disruption yesterday and today, and we’re very sorry.”
The airline has urged customers whose flights have been cancelled not to travel to the airport, warning that its phone and online chat services are “extremely busy”.
Passengers who no longer wish to travel today can move their flight for free up until Friday, September 11, while those whose services have been cancelled can check for alternative flights through BA’s website.
The fresh cancellations come after BA cancelled or diverted around 100 flights on Tuesday as the NATS failure caused widespread disruption across Britain’s aviation network.
Nearly 300 BA flights have now been cancelled or diverted across the two days.
The NATS technical failure affected its flight data system at Swanwick on Tuesday.
Although the problem has since been resolved, airlines have been dealing with the knock-on impact of aircraft and crews being left in the wrong locations.
NATS chief executive Martin Rolfe has apologised for the failure and said a full investigation will be carried out to establish its cause, with a cyber attack ruled out.
Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander met Mr Rolfe on Wednesday morning to raise concerns about the scale of the disruption.
Downing Street said she has given Nats one week to report back on its full investigation into what went wrong.
This story originally appeared on Express.co.uk
