British Airways had to apologize already in July after computer glitches in check-in systems also delayed passengers. By 8 p.m. EDT, there were already long queues and thousands of frustrated passengers at airports around the world.
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“We had a problem with our check-in systems which affected check in for some flights from the USA, but this was not a worldwide issue and there were no cancellations”, British Airways said in a statement, according to CNN Money.
It added: “Our colleagues are doing everything possible to check in customers for their journey”. Angry travelers waited in check-in queues for hours while the airline fell back on the old school method of handwriting records, boarding passes and baggage labels.
The only affected flight was Tuesday morning’s BA1321 outgoing service to Heathrow, due to the check-in process having to be done manually.
BA, owned by International Consolidated Airlines Group, apologised to customers and urged passengers to check in online before they reached the airport.
This has been a hard summer for airlines, many of which have had to contend with technical problems that lead to delays, cancellations and thousands of angry customers.
It comes as seven people were arrested following a protest at London City Airport grounded passengers and disrupted flights in and out.
An outage that affected British Airways passengers in the United States overnight caused disruption across the carrier’s network Tuesday.
Planes were reportedly grounded at global airports including London Heathrow, London Gatwick, and Manchester in England, as well as Toronto, Atlanta Chicago and Seattle in the US.
In San Francisco, a passenger said he had been waiting as long just to check in.
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“It took them all their time to get her a chair and some water – although to be fair they were dealing with irate customers and a computer shutdown”. About three weeks earlier, Southwest Airlines had seen a system failure that had led to the cancellation of more than 1,000 flights.
