Yesterday, the British Airways website suffered technical problems which left many passengers unable to access most of the sites features for several hours.
Between approximately midday and 19:00 on Tuesday 11 the ability to book, check-in online, and access customer accounts via the airlines website, were unavailable due to problems caused by a database upgrade the night before.
Although both ba.com and britishairways.com websites are working now, the outage lasted approximately eight and half hours, much to the chagrin of passengers.
Anyone attempting to access the website during the outage was met with this message.
In a statement British Airways said: “Unfortunately the IT system which manages the online check-in function has not been fully fixed and therefore we have taken the decision to switch it off for the time being. We recognise the frustration this is causing some customers and we are trying to fix it as an urgent priority.”
“If you are flying with us on Tuesday evening or Wednesday, please check-in at the airport and arrive in good time for your flight as we expect some of the major airports on our network to be busier than usual at what is already a busy time of year with the Easter holidays.”
In something of an ironic twist, British Airways actually laid off hundreds of staff, who would have been tasked with dealing with this problem, in late 2016.
Last year the company said that by December 2016 the software division would be restructured in order to reduce costs, by laying off several hundred employees, and outsourcing a number of the jobs to India.
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A number of those who were to be laid off did make an appeal to the UK Home Office but this appeal was unsuccessful.
The British Airways website has now resumed normal service following yesterday’s technical problems.
