BA delays: Theresa May calls on airline to compensate customers after IT meltdown

Passengers threaten to boycott airline over computer system failure

BA passengers continue to be affected by missing baggage after the three-day system crash (EPA)

Theresa May has joined passengers in demanding British Airways offer speedy compensation to those caught up in travel chaos over the bank holiday weekend.

BA said its IT system had been fixed and it expected all its flights from Heathrow and Gatwick to operate on time on Tuesday, as passengers threatened to boycott the beleaguered airline.

An outage on the company’s computer network on Saturday left 75,000 passengers stranded and more than 1,000 flights delayed or cancelled. It saw previously-loyal BA passengers threatening to boycott the airline.

Others, waiting on historic compensation claims to be settled, seized on the chaos as evidence of the airline’s management failings.

Asked about the BA meltdown at an election campaign press conference in Wolverhampton, the Prime Minister said it was important the airline offered compensation to its customers.

"It's up to them to sort their IT out and to ensure that they are able to provide the services that people expect them to provide as British Airways,” she added.

BA said in a statement: "Our IT systems are back up and running and our operation continues to run as planned today with a full flight schedule at Heathrow and Gatwick.”

But attempts to restore the reputation of the brand are likely to take much longer.

A "significant number of customers" are still without their luggage and BA has said it still has "work to do" reuniting bags with passengers.

In one instance, a couple who were forced to cancel their holiday to New York were told their suitcase had ended up in the US city three days later.

Dozens of passengers took to Twitter to say they would chose other airlines to fly with in future.

Jonathan Marten, who was trying to get to San Francisco from Edinburgh, said he had been rebooked four times and had in the process been downgraded to economy.

Passengers stand at the British Airways check-in desk after the London's Gatwick and Heathrow airports suffered an IT systems failure, at the 'Leonardo da Vinci' airport in Fiumicino, near Rome, Italy (EPA)

“I've had to pay £61 twice to select an exit row on my cancelled flights out and yet still can't pick seats. Never flying BA again," he wrote.

The chaos at the weekend was also seized on by customers who said their claims for compensation for previous delays were not being dealt with properly.

Peter Wakeham told The Independent he was boycotting the airline after it failed to pay 800 euros compensation for a delayed flight last summer.

He said despite repeated attempts to have his case resolved, and after BA had initially agreed to pay the money, it had failed to transfer the compensation and was now ignoring his emails.

Mr Wakeham added that he will now fly with Virgin on trips to the US and Norwegian within Europe.

BA said in a statement: “We are very sorry for the frustration customers are experiencing and understand the difficulties they are facing.

“By the end of yesterday, two thirds of customers whose flights were cancelled this weekend had flown to their destinations.

“Our priority now is to get the remainder of our customers away.

“We appreciate that some our customers feel let down by British Airways, and apologise for the awful experiences they’ve been having, but we are doing everything we can to support them as best we can.

“We have additional resource in our call centres, customers are using our automated rebooking tool through our websites and we are also working with 30 other airlines to accommodate the rest of our customers so that they can fly as soon as possible.”