British Airways cancels all short-haul flights from Heathrow today leaving passengers stranded after 'technical issues'

BRITISH Airways has CANCELLED all short-haul flights out of London Heathrow until midday today because of ongoing technical issues.

It comes after BA's website and app were down for hours on Friday evening, leaving customers unable to book flights.

The problem – which may also cause delays for its customers using Gatwick and London City Airport – is due to a hardware issue.

BA said there was nothing to suggest the cancellations and delays were caused by a cyber attack.

Passengers have today been left stranded – with the major outage causing cancellations, delays, and luggage pile-ups.

Long-haul flights are still operating out of the airport, but customers may still face delays.

In a statement this morning, BA said: "We are extremely sorry that due to the continuing technical issues we are facing we have regrettably had to cancel all short-haul flights from Heathrow today until midday.

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"Customers due to travel later today should check their flight status on ba.com before coming to the airport as we anticipate further disruption during the day.

"Our long-haul services at Heathrow and all flights at Gatwick and London City Airport are due to operate as planned, but customers may experience some delays.

"Our website ba.com is working and customers can check-in online and at the airport."

All customers facing short-haul service cancellations will be offered full refunds, or passengers can rebook their flights to a later date for free.

BA added: "Our teams have been working hard through the night and will continue to do so to resolve the issue as soon as possible.

"We advise our customers due to travel today to check ba.com for the latest flight information before coming to the airport.

"We know we have let our customers down and we will do everything we can to make this up to them – but for now our focus is on getting as many customers and flights away as we can."

Ed Hall, 54, a television executive from Oxfordshire, was yesterday stuck on a plane for over an hour after landing at Heathrow Terminal 5.

HOLIDAY HOLDUP

The delay was because the crew could not access any IT systems to get a stand where passengers could disembark.

And he said there were issues even before his BA 399 flight took off from Brussels.

Mr Hall said: "We couldn't take off as the pilot's system that calculates weight, loads and distribution went offline and we had to go back to the gate from the runway to get a (manual) copy sent from London.

"BA is running on paper tonight".

Once he finally got off the plane, he said baggage was piling up from passengers stuck on other flights.

Meanwhile, Sophia Prout, 33, waited in Terminal 5 for her BA flight to Lisbon, scheduled for 7.05pm, until it was cancelled just after 9pm.

'NOT A CYBER ATTACK'

She said it was "frustrating" that technical issues were ongoing as she had been waiting for a total of four hours after checking in at around 5pm when only a few of the desks were working.

Ms Prout added: "We're lucky that we can turn around and go home if the flight gets cancelled, but would be nice to get an idea of when/if we will take off."

The outage comes after British Airways suspended flights to Moscow on Friday and re-routed planes flying over Russia.

The move came in response to Moscow banning UK carriers due to the Ukraine crisis, parent group IAG said Friday.

In a brief statement, BA said: "We have suspended our flights to Moscow and also the use of Russian airspace, following the confirmation of Russian government restrictions."

The airline stressed it was monitoring the situation "closely" and would offer full refunds for cancellations caused by the Ukraine crisis.

Re-routing of some services may lead to longer flight times, it added.

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