British Airways has apologised to customers after suffering “a technical issue” with its flight planning systems, affecting flights departing the US and elsewhere globally.
In a statement, BA said: “We’re experiencing delays to some of our flights due to a technical issue with our flight planning.
“We’re sorry for the disruption to our customers’ journey, we’re urgently investigating this so that they can travel as soon as possible.”
An earlier statement had blamed a “third-party planning supplier”.
The issue first came to light when passengers in the USA took to social media platforms complaining of delays and a lack of information from BA staff on the ground.
Some customers said they were delayed for hours.
“All fun and games at JFK,” one tweeted. “All British Airways flights grounded due to an error with their flight mapping system and now we have multiple alarms going off in departures.”
Another said: “Captain of our British Airways flight just said that their flight computers have been down for two hours worldwide and no BA plane can file a flight plan? Seems not ideal.”
BA has said the technical issues do not affect any current departed flights.
It is also understood that short-haul flights are unaffected by the failure.
“This is not a safety issue. We are keeping our customers up to date and providing them with refreshments”, the airline said.
Another passenger complained about the uncertainty of the situation: “Midnight and we can’t go to a hotel because BA won’t officially cancel the flight. We don’t know when the flight will leave and there’s a plane full of people that they flew from Cayman *after* this meltdown started who will spend the night in the plane!”
However, this is not the first time BA has had “technical issues” – back in March 2022 the airline experience another IT issue which caused delays at London’s Heathrow airport.