British Airways reported a technical problem in the wee hours of Tuesday morning, which caused the airline to cancel flights in several locations. This problem has been fixed.
British Airways has apologized for the delay of flights departing the United States.
The airline tweeted, “Our teams have now fixed a temporary problem that affected some of our long-haul flight planning systems last night, which caused us to be behind schedule.” “We are sorry that our customers’ travel plans had to be changed.”
According to the flight status search engine for British Airways, there were 14 flights from John F. Kennedy Airport in New York City to London on Monday. Ten were late, and two didn’t show up at all. On Monday, three of every four flights were late at Miami International Airport and Los Angeles International Airport. Several flights were late by almost 24 hours.
Short-haul flights presumably were not impacted by the technical issues, and safety concerns were not raised as a result.
Flights delayed at Heathrow are now taking off, but Terminal 5 will likely be busy this afternoon.
A spokesperson for the airport said, “We have more staff on hand to help passengers and get them on their way as quickly as possible.”
BA has had problems with technology before.
In February, the airline apologized after IT problems forced them to cancel all short-haul flights from Heathrow.
People waiting at John F. Kennedy International Airport on Monday night said they had been on Twitter for more than three hours.
Others said they had to wait for hours on planes parked on runways before moving back to the airport.
In a statement early on Tuesday, BA said, “Our flights that were supposed to leave the US tonight are currently delayed because of a technical problem with our third-party flight planning supplier, which we are looking into right away.”
The airline had to deal with delays last week because of the cold weather. Some flights had to be delayed because the planes needed to be de-iced.
The situation has made it harder to handle bags, and people post pictures of bags piled up at Heathrow Airport on social media.
