Human error caused British Airways failure?

This article is more than 12 months old

Jun 03, 2017 06:00 am

LONDON: A contractor doing maintenance work at a British Airways (BA) data centre inadvertently switched off the power supply, knocking out the airline's computer systems and leaving 75,000 people stranded last weekend, the Times newspaper reported yesterday.

BA had to cancel all flights from London's Heathrow and Gatwick airports last Saturday.

Quoting a BA source, the newspaper said the power supply unit that sparked the IT failure was working perfectly but was accidentally shut down by a worker. An investigation into the power outage is likely to focus on human error rather than any equipment failure, it said.

CBRE, the company that manages BA's data centre, is denying that any human error has been identified. - REUTERS