Here We Go Again: British Airways Suffers Major IT Outage Less Than Two Months After The Last One

British Airways passengers attempting to book flights, check-in, or get in touch with the airline were greeted with a blank screen when they tried to log on to the airline’s website on Friday afternoon after the airline experienced yet another major IT outage.

BA’s dilapidated technology went into meltdown at around 3 pm on January 17, leaving frustrated customers in limbo as engineers scrambled to work out what had gone wrong this time.

The popular Down Detector website showed a spike in issues with BA.com as visitors to the airline’s website were met with a message that read: “We regret to advise that this section of the site is temporarily unavailable.”

On social media site X, the airline’s embattled customer service team confirmed the airline was experiencing yet more technical issues with its aging IT systems, saying: “We are aware that some customers are having issues accessing the website.”

Our IT team are currently looking into this and trying to get this resolved as quickly as possible.”

British Airways experienced its last IT outage less than two months ago on November 18, 2924, but chief executive Sean Doyle said the technical snafu actually showed that the airline’s £750 million investment new computers was starting to pay off.

In an internal memo, Doyle explained that the kind of outage British Airways experienced would have lasted several days and stranded tens of thousands of passengers if it had occurred several years ago.

Doyle said that a backup system kicked in just over an hour after the outage was reported, and priority systems were quickly brought back online. As a result, the airline said it didn’t have to cancel a single flight, although some were delayed.

“We don’t suggest this is ideal – far from it – but every time we experience these issues, our response gets better,” Doyle said. “IT issues affect all companies. What matters is how quickly we respond when they do happen to limit the impact on customers.”