British Airways: turmoil continues after IT failure grounds flights

Staff reporter(wp):

Disruption from a major British Airways IT failure that affected more than 1,000 flights on Saturday has continued into a second day, leaving more passengers stranded.

After all the airline’s flights from Heathrow and Gatwick were grounded on Saturday, services resumed but with cancellations and delays.

By 11am, 36 flights from Heathrow had been cancelled and 36 had departed, the BBC reported. There were no cancellations at Gatwick but passengers experienced delays of about 30 minutes.

Both airports advised passengers to check the status of their flights after terminals became congested on Saturday with travellers hoping to get away for the long weekend and half-term school holiday.

Welsh international table tennis player Chloe Thomas, whose 7.30am flight to Germany for the World Table Tennis Championship in Düsseldorf was cancelled at the last minute after she arrived four hours before the scheduled departure time, described chaotic scenes.

“It’s chaos, people are running about all over the place trying to rebook,” she said. “There’s no one to help, no leadership. There are lots of people everywhere. There’s nowhere to sit, so people are just lying on the floor, sleeping on yoga mats.”

She said airport staff had handed out the mats, as well as thin blankets, for people who were stuck there overnight. She added that one of the shops had already sold out of food. Passengers faced long lines to check in, rebook or find lost luggage.

Melanie Ware, who flew in from Los Angeles and was trying to get to Venice on her honeymoon, told Sky News: “We rebooked for Venice for tonight, which they also have cancelled now. So we have no way of getting out of Heathrow and they haven’t compensated us for anything, and we’re stuck and this is the worst honeymoon ever. British Airways has ruined our honeymoon.”

King’s Cross station in London was packed with people trying to make their way north, with travellers queuing out of the doors and on to the platform for the 9am train to Edinburgh.

Those that could not get on ran to the doors of the next service at 9.30am when the platform was announced, but were met with a warning from the train guard that seats could not be guaranteed for all passengers.

Some passengers lucky enough to board one of the few flights taking off on Saturday later found their luggage had not made it on to the plane with them.

Terry Page, 28, from London, flew from Heathrow to Fort Worth, Texas, where he and about 50 other passengers were told they would have to wait until Monday before being reunited with their bags.

BA, which is facing huge compensation costs as a result of the disruption, was unable to say how many flights would be cancelled or how for long the disruption was likely to continue. Experts predict the knock-on effect, with many planes not in the right place, could continue for several days

The airline said it was aiming to operate a near-normal schedule at Gatwick and the majority of services from Heathrow on Sunday.

A spokesman said: “Our focus is on updating customers and doing what we can to get them to their destinations as quickly as possible.”

The glitch is believed to have been caused by a power supply issue and there is no evidence of a cyber-attack, the airline said. It has denied a claim by the GMB union that BA’s decision to outsource hundreds of IT jobs to India last year was behind the problems.

There were issues with its online check-in systems in September and July last year, causing severe delays for passengers.

Cancelled flight? Know your rights

Passengers have some rights under EU law to claim compensation for delayed or cancelled flights for services that departed within the EU or were operated by a European airline.

Delays of more than three hours for short-haul flights (up to 1,500km or 930 miles) get compensation of €250 (£218); while the figure is €400 for medium-haul trips (1,500km to 3,500km).

For long-haul flights (more than 3,500km), delays of between three and four hours have compensation set at €300; for delays longer than four hours the figure is €600.

Airlines are required to give passengers food and drinks for delays of more than two hours, as well as hotel accommodation for overnight delays and transfers.

Police release CCTV pictures of Manchester bomber

Pic:Greater Manchester police handout of of Salman Abedi taken from CCTV footage of the night of the Manchester Arena attack.
Crime reporter(wp):

Pictures of the Manchester bomber on his way to the arena where he carried out Britain’s worst terrorist attack in 12 years have been released by police. CCTV footage shows Salman Abedi, 22, shortly before his suicide attack on an Ariana Grande concert at Manchester arena on Monday night.

The CCTV images show Abedi in glasses, wearing a black puffa jacket, baseball cap, jeans and trainers and carrying the rucksack containing the device that killed 22 people and injured 119 others.

Police believe he assembled his deadly bomb in a rented Airbnb flat in a mansion block on Granby Row in the city centre, near Canal Street. The flat is one of 17 locations searched by forensic experts in the past few days. Fourteen searches were continuing on Saturday night.

Detectives know that Abedi returned to the UK from Libya on 18 May, four days before the bombing. They hope the images will jog the memories of people who may have seen him in the run-up to the attack.

In a statement released on Saturday night, hours after the terrorism threat level in the UK was reduced from critical to severe, Greater Manchester’s police chief, Ian Hopkins, and its deputy assistant commissioner, Neil Basu, said the investigation was making good progress.

Thirteen people have so far been arrested on suspicion of terrorism offences, police said. A thousand people are involved in the investigation to Abedi’s network.

“In the past five days we have gathered significant information about Abedi, his associates, his finances, the places he had been, how the device was built and the wider conspiracy. As a result of the arrests and searches which have taken place, we now have many further lines of inquiry. We already have more than 1,500 actions we are pursuing,” the officers said.

“Since Monday night, Greater Manchester police and Counter Terrorism Policing North-West have been working closely with the national counter-terrorism policing network on what continues to be a large-scale and fast-moving investigation.

“The investigation is making good progress and we know one of the last places Abedi went was the city centre flat, and from there he left to make his way to the Manchester Arena. The flat is highly relevant as a location which we believe may be the final assembly place for the device.”

The latest arrests took place in the early hours of Saturday morning during a raid in Cheetham Hill, a multicultural area of north Manchester. Two men aged 20 and 22 were taken into custody. Neighbours identified Yahya and Mohamed Werfalli, aged 20 and 22, as two of the occupants of the raided house. They were said to be of Libyan descent and part of the same friendship groups as the Manchester bomber.

Shortly after those arrests, armed officers arrived at a terraced house in Boscombe Street, on the Moss Side/Rusholme border, near the site of Manchester City’s old Maine Road ground. Some residents were evacuated as bomb disposal experts from the army carried out investigations in the property.

In their joint statement, the senior officers revealed details on how the investigation unfolded following the bomb, which detonated around 10.30pm on Monday just as the concert finished.

Firearms officers from across the country were deployed to support GMP in case of a further attack. More officers from around the national counter-terrorism policing network across the UK soon arrived. “By early Tuesday morning there was an established pattern, with all officers and staff working on the response to the attack in day and night shifts of approximately 14 hours each,” the senior officers said.Within an hour, GMP had set up a specialist counter-terrorism control room, with a first priority of identifying the attacker. “Specialist counter-terrorist forensic teams were sent to try and identify the attacker and within two hours his identity was known. With this information, officers could begin to establish his movements to try and understand if anyone else was linked or any more attacks planned,” the statement said.

They added: “The whole team are working round the clock. We have around 1,000 people involved in the investigation alone. In addition, there are hundreds of officers and staff from Greater Manchester Police and other forces involved in the security around Greater Manchester.

“This is still a live investigation, which is not slowing down. Our priorities are to understand the run-up to this terrible event and to understand if more people were involved in planning this attack.”