BA Loses 6 hours of online bookings
Beleaguered UK carrier British Airways can add six-hours of lost online bookings and probably a heap of grumpy passengers looking for web check-in to its woes following a major website crash.
The problems are understood to have started at around 6am GMT December 11 and hit the entire booking system across BA.com.
Visitors were only able to search and book fares after midday.
Most were greeted with a simple message “ba.com instability and flight disruption due to fog” most of the morning on the homepage.
The bad luck continued as the website crash coincided with disruption to BA flights in the London and Edinburgh areas due to heavy fog.
Not only did the search and booking engine fall over but passengers checking in for flights later today and over the weekend also faced problems – in fact, they couldn’t, meaning that call centre staff and self-service kiosks at airports were overloaded at one point during the morning panic.
A BA official says the cause was still unknown.
BA is not the only major carrier to have suffered major IT problems recently. Air New Zealand found itself with thousands of stranded passengers around the country when a system failure prevented airport check-in, aircraft despatching and online bookings.
