Consumers’ champion Which? Travel says British Airways should proactively inform passengers of their rights to compensation following today’s technical failure, which has led to dozens of flights from London being cancelled or delayed.
Describing the disruption as ‘another kick in the teeth for travellers’, Which? Travel pointed out that passengers should also be refunded for ‘reasonable out of pocket expenses’ by the airline.
Thousands of BA passengers, who for weeks have faced the fear that their BA flights might be cancelled this month due to a pilots’ strike or strikes at Heathrow, have been left stranded at London airports today by a breakdown of BA systems that control check-in and flight departures.
The airline has been checking in passengers manually since early this morning when it became apparent that they were having problems checking in online.
However this, and a separate problem affecting flight departures, has caused delays and cancellations.
The problem appears to be mainly affecting flights from Heathrow, where dozens of mainly short-haul flights have been cancelled, but it has also hit Gatwick and London City.
If the technical problem is indeed BA’s fault, the airline will have to compensate passengers whose flights have been cancelled as well as those whose services have been delayed three hours or more under EU regulation 261.
Which? Travel’s Naomi Leach, said: "This apparent BA systems failure is another kick in the teeth for travellers who are likely to have spent weeks worrying about whether their holiday flights will take off – so it is important that the airline now moves quickly to resolve the issue as quickly as possible to minimise disruption.
"Passengers who have had their flights cancelled at short notice should be offered an alternative flight or a refund and as these problems appear to have been caused by BA’s technical failure, the airline should also be proactively informing passengers of their rights to claim compensation and reasonable out of pocket expenses."
