text: British Airways' chief executive is "profusely" sorry for an IT meltdown he revealed has disrupted 75,000 passengers' flights. 
   
   Alex Cruz told Sky News the airline was "making some progress" towards getting their services back to normal on Monday following the computer outage, which he described as "a tragedy". 
   
   The airline boss denied claims from the GMB union the problems were down to BA cutting "hundreds of dedicated and loyal" IT staff and contracting the work out to India to save money. 
   
   Mr Cruz insisted those parties involved in the weekend's problems had "not been involved with any type of outsourcing in any foreign countries". 
   
   He added: "They've all been local issues around a local data centre who have been managed and fixed by local resources." 
   
   Mr Cruz said there was "no evidence whatsoever" a cyberattack was behind the computer problems. 
   
   He instead cited a "power surge" around 9.30am on Saturday morning for the "catastrophic effect" on all of BA's systems. 
   
   Video: Honeymooners stuck in Heathrow for three days 
   
   Video: BA boss reacts to honeymooners' delay 
   
   The IT troubles had led to no compromise of any passenger data or any concerns about access to the terror watchlist for flights, Mr Cruz said. 
   
   He revealed BA is operating more than 95% of its flights on Monday, with all of its Gatwick services and long-haul flights from Heathrow going ahead. 
   
   More than 90% of BA short-haul flights from Heathrow would also be operating, while more than two-thirds of passengers affected on Saturday and Sunday would make it to their final destination by the end of Monday. 
   
   Other passengers whose flights were disrupted over the weekend will have the option to re-book their flights for any time over the next six months. 
   
   Image: People sleep at Heathrow Airport as a British Airways IT chaos affected 75,000 passengers 
   
   Responding to the chaos that grounded scores of planes over the weekend, Mr Cruz said: "We do apologise profusely for the hardship that these customers of ours have had to go through. 
   
   "We know that there have been holidays interrupted and personal events that have been interrupted and people waiting in queues for a really long time. 
   
   "We absolutely profusely apologise for that and we are absolutely committed to provide and abide by the compensation rules that are currently in place." 
   
   Mr Cruz promised an "exhaustive investigation" into the meltdown, adding: "We're absolutely committed to finding the root causes of this particular event and we will make sure nothing like this happens to British Airways ever again." 
   
   Experts predict BA is facing a huge compensation bill, estimated at more than £100m, over the disruption. 
   
   Customers have been left queuing for hours in packed terminals over the last few days and some had to bed down on terminal floors on Saturday. 
   
   Many complained of scant information from staff. 
   
   :: Passengers describe airport pandemonium 
   
   Mr Cruz was shown a Sky News video of a honeymoon couple who had been stranded for three days at Heathrow, causing them to miss the start of their cruise holiday. 
   
   He said: "We are extremely sorry and what we will do is make up and follow absolutely our obligations and provide as much flexibility as we can to them and the rest of the passengers that have been affected." 
   
   The IT outage had a knock-on effect on BA services around the world, while passengers who did get onto flights from the UK reported arriving without luggage. 
   
   Video: BA worker threatens to call police on passenger 
   
   Video has emerged of a BA employee at Venice Airport threatening to call the police on a woman who asked about the policy on customers who do not have money to pay for hotel rooms. 
   
   Stacy Irish, who posted the footage on Twitter on 28 May, said: "I was told it has nothing to with BA if customers can't afford it. She then said she would call the police." 
   
   Some experts expect the disruption to linger for several days, as planes and aircrew are returned to their positions and the backlog of passengers is cleared. ||||| Alex Cruz, the chief executive of British Airways, has apologised “profusely” to passengers caught up in the travel chaos at the weekend that grounded flights at Heathrow and Gatwick, but denied the disruption had anything to do with cost-cutting in the business. 
   
   Giving his first media interview since a major outage caused the airline’s IT system to collapse last Saturday, he refused to resign and said the problem was not a result of outsourcing jobs to other countries. 
   
   “I can confirm that all the parties involved around this particular event have not been involved in any type of outsourcing in any foreign country,” he told Sky News. 
   
   “They have all been local issues around a local data centre.” 
   
   He added that no BA passengers’ data had been compromised in the IT meltdown and said there was no evidence it was the result of a cyber attack, promising not to allow such an outage to happen again. 
   
   The IT failure was caused by a short but catastrophic power surge at 9.30am that affected the company’s messaging system, he said, and the backup system failed to work properly. 
   
   “We will have completed an exhaustive investigation on exactly the reasons of why this happened,” Mr Cruz said. “We will, of course, share those conclusions once we have actually finished them. 
   
   “We have no evidence whatsoever that there was any cyber attack of any sort.” 
   
   BA plans to operate about 95 per cent of its flights on Monday from the two major London hubs, but 27 departures and arrivals were already cancelled on the day, and 58 were delayed. 
   
   After the outage caused more than 1,000 flights to be delayed or cancelled, including BA’s sister airlines in Spain, Iberia and Air Nostrum, focus quickly turned to Mr Cruz’s handling of the company, having shut down the airline’s computer department last year, slashing 700 jobs in the UK. 
   
   In pictures: British Airways disruptions 
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
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   1/17 A passenger looks at a British Airway plane at John F. Kennedy (JFK) international airport in New York Getty Images 
   
   2/17 British Airways planes are seen at Heathrow Terminal 5 Reuters 
   
   3/17 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 
   
   4/17 Arrivals notice boards are displayed at Heathrow Terminal 5 Reuters 
   
   5/17 People wait with their luggage at the British Airways check in desks at Heathrow Terminal 5 Reuters 
   
   6/17 Thousands of passengers face a second day of travel disruption after a British Airways IT failure caused the airline to cancel most of its services Getty Images 
   
   7/17 A woman covered in a blanket sleeps in Heathrow Airport Terminal 5 Getty Images 
   
   8/17 People sleep next to their luggage at Heathrow Terminal 5 Reuters 
   
   9/17 People sleep at Heathrow Terminal 5 in London Reuters 
   
   10/17 A woman sleeps on a luggage trolley at Heathrow Terminal 5 Reuters 
   
   11/17 People queue to enter the terminal at Gatwick Airport Reuters 
   
   12/17 People wait with their luggage at Heathrow Airport Terminal 5 Getty 
   
   13/17 Thousands of passengers face a second day of travel disruption after a British Airways IT failure caused the airline to cancel most of its services Getty 
   
   14/17 People queue with their luggage outside Heathrow Airport Terminal 5 Getty Images 
   
   15/17 People queue for check-in at Heathrow Airport Terminal 5. Thousands of passengers face a second day of travel disruption after a British Airways IT failure caused the airline to cancel most of its services Getty Images 
   
   16/17 People sleep next to their luggage at Heathrow Terminal 5 Reuters 
   
   17/17 People wait with their luggage at Heathrow Terminal 5 Reuters 
   
   He then outsourced the company’s IT systems to Indian firm Tata Consultancy Services. 
   
   GMB union’s national aviation officer, Mick Rix, claimed the chaos “could have all been avoided” if BA had not “made hundreds of dedicated and loyal IT staff redundant and outsourced the work to India”. 
   
   Experts predict the knock-on effect could continue for several days and BA is facing huge compensation costs, with reports suggesting the bill could top £100m. 
   
   Mr Cruz said the airline was “committed” to following all compensation rules. ||||| In this image taken from the twitter feed of Emily Puddifer, a view of Terminal 5 departure lounge, at London's Heathrow airport after flights were canceled due to the airport suffering an IT systems... (Associated Press) 
   
   In this image taken from the twitter feed of Emily Puddifer, a view of Terminal 5 departure lounge, at London's Heathrow airport after flights were canceled due to the airport suffering an IT systems failure, Saturday, May 27, 2017. British Airways canceled all flights from London's Heathrow and Gatwick... (Associated Press) 
   
   LONDON (AP) — Travelers on British Airways and its sister airlines in Spain faced a third day of delays and cancellations Monday, mainly on short-haul flights in Europe, after the company suffered a colossal IT failure over the weekend. 
   
   BA chief executive Alex Cruz said that the airline was running a "near-full operation" at London's Gatwick Airport and planned to operate all scheduled long-haul services from Heathrow. But he said there would still be delays, as well as some canceled short-haul flights. 
   
   Data from flight tracker FlightAware.com showed BA's sister airlines in Spain, Iberia and Air Nostrum, cancelled over 320 flights on Monday, a bank holiday in the U.K. that sees a high level of air travel. 
   
   BA itself canceled another 27 flights and had 117 more delayed Monday. 
   
   The airline, which is part of the broader International Airlines Group, canceled all flights from Heathrow and Gatwick on Saturday after the IT outage, which it blamed on a power-supply problem. The glitch threw the plans of tens of thousands of travelers into disarray. 
   
   Cruz told Sky News Monday the problem started at 9:30 Saturday morning when "there was indeed a power surge that had a catastrophic effect over some communications hardware which eventually affected all the messaging across our systems." 
   
   He said there was no evidence indicating the airline had come under cyberattack. 
   
   BA operates hundreds of flights from Heathrow and Gatwick on a typical day — and both are major hubs for worldwide travel. 
   
   Passengers, some of whom had spent the night at London's Heathrow Airport, faced frustrating waits to learn if and when they could fly out. 
   
   Some endured hours-long lines to check in, reclaim lost luggage or rebook flights at Terminal 5, BA's hub at Heathrow. Many complained about a lack of information from the airline. 
   
   Cruz apologized in a video statement, saying: "I know this has been a horrible time for customers." 
   
   The British union GMB linked the IT problems directly to the company's decision to cut IT staff last year. 
   
   "This could have all been avoided. In 2016, BA made hundreds of dedicated and loyal IT staff redundant and outsourced the work to India," said Mick Rix, national officer for aviation at the union. ||||| Ryanair is making hay while the sun is not shining on British Airways. 
   
   BA customers are facing a third day of travel disruption because of a breakdown in the airline's computer system. 
   
   And Ryanair is making no attempt to hide its schadenfreude: 
   
   "Meanwhile, over at the @ British_Airways IT department..." said a tweet on the official Ryanair account, along with the hashtag #ShouldHaveFlownRyanair. 
   
   "Breaking news: BA appoints new head of IT," said another tweet which was pinned to Ryanair's page. 
   
   Ouch. 
   
   Some people saw the funny side: 
   
   @Ryanair I am crying this is bloody brilliant 😂😂😂😂 — Dannii (@Dannii_BJROE) May 28, 2017 
   
   Others didn't: 
   
   @Ryanair Isn't this a bit like a run down corner shop poking fun at Sainsbury's? — Jon Cook (@JonCook188) May 28, 2017 
   
   @Ryanair Oh the irony @Ryanair the company with THE worst customer service known to man ... flew once 11 years ago, vowed never again .. and haven't — Sean Elkins (@seanieboyelkins) May 29, 2017 
   
   British Airways said 75,000 customers were affected by the technical glitch over the weekend but denied the failure was because the company outsourced its IT operations. ||||| Image copyright Getty Images 
   
   British Airways is working to restore its computer systems after a power failure caused major disruption for thousands of passengers worldwide. 
   
   The airline is "closer to full operational capacity" after an IT power cut resulted in mass flight cancellations at Heathrow and Gatwick. 
   
   Thousands of passengers remain displaced, with large numbers sleeping overnight in terminals. 
   
   BA has not explained the cause of the power problem. 
   
   So far on Monday, 13 short-haul flights at Heathrow have been cancelled. 
   
   Heathrow advised affected BA passengers not to travel to the airport unless their flights had been rebooked, or were scheduled to take off today. 
   
   Passengers on cancelled flights have been told to use the BA website to rebook. 
   
   Chief executive Alex Cruz has posted videos on Twitter apologising for what he called a "horrible time for passengers". 
   
   But no-one from the airline has been made available to answer questions about the system crash, and it has not explained why there was no back-up system in place. 
   
   Cancellations and delays affected thousands of passengers at both Heathrow and Gatwick on Saturday. 
   
   All flights operated from Gatwick on Sunday but more than a third of services from Heathrow - mostly to short-haul destinations - were cancelled. 
   
   Passengers slept on yoga mats handed out by the airline as conference rooms were opened to provide somewhere more comfortable to rest. 
   
   What went wrong at BA? 
   
   Rory Cellan-Jones, technology correspondent 
   
   Image copyright Getty Images 
   
   BA blames a power cut, but a corporate IT expert said it should not have caused "even a flicker of the lights" in the data-centre. 
   
   Even if the power could not be restored, the airline's Disaster Recovery Plan should have whirred into action. But that will have depended in part on veteran staff with knowledge of the complex patchwork of systems built up over the years. 
   
   Many of those people may have left when much of the IT operation was outsourced to India. 
   
   One theory of the IT expert, who does not wish to be named, is that when the power came back on the systems were unusable because the data was unsynchronised. 
   
   In other words the airline was suddenly faced with a mass of conflicting records of passengers, aircraft and baggage movements - all the complex logistics of modern air travel. 
   
   Read the full blog 
   
   BA said it operated virtually all scheduled long-haul flights on Sunday, but the knock-on effects of Saturday's disruption resulted in a reduced short-haul programme. 
   
   "We apologise again to customers for the frustration and inconvenience they are experiencing and thank them for their continued patience." 
   
   Ian Sanderson, one of the affected passengers who is stuck in transit in London, said he was "incandescent with rage" after being unable to rebook his flight, or speak to a member of staff. 
   
   Image copyright Twitter Image caption Thousands of customers have taken to Twitter to vent their frustration 
   
   Speaking on Sunday evening, he said: "I've bombarded them with about 100 tweets in the last 24 hours. I know that's annoying but there's nothing else I can do. 
   
   "We've tried to call them on the numbers they give and all we've got is the same recorded message which then cuts off at the end." 
   
   Former Virgin Airlines spokesman Paul Charles said: "What seems remarkable is there was no back-up system kicking in within a few minutes system failing. 
   
   "Businesses of this type need systems backing up all the time, and this is what passengers expect." 
   
   'Extraordinary circumstances' 
   
   BA is liable to reimburse thousands of passengers for refreshments and hotel expenses, and travel industry commentators have suggested the cost to the company - part of Europe's largest airline group IAG - could run into tens of millions of pounds. 
   
   Shares in IAG listed on the Madrid stock exchange are currently trading down by about 3%. 
   
   Customers displaced by flight cancellations can claim up to £200 a day for a room (based on two people sharing), £50 for transport between the hotel and airport, and £25 a day per adult for meals and refreshments. 
   
   Consumer expert Franky Brehany said travellers stranded in a "high-value city" like London may be able to claim more and should keep all receipts. 
   
   But he added that it might be harder for passengers to claim compensation, as BA may blame "extraordinary circumstances" - "like an act of God or force majeure" - meaning the airline would only have to reimburse hotel and food costs. 
   
   Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Queues built up on Sunday at Heathrow Terminal 5 as passengers waited to speak to BA staff 
   
   Image copyright Getty Images 
   
   Thousands of bags remain at Heathrow Airport, but BA has advised passengers not to return to collect them, saying they will be couriered to customers. 
   
   The airline said there was no evidence the computer failure was the result of a cyber-attack. It denied claims by the GMB union that the problem could be linked to the company outsourcing its IT work. 
   
   Gatwick Airport said it was continuing to advise customers travelling with British Airways to check the status of their flight with the airline before travelling to the airport. 
   
   EU flight delay rights
target: – It's close but no cigar for British Airways. The airline has fully restored all its long-haul services out of Heathrow following Saturday's crippling IT failure, but Monday marks the third day of related delays and cancellations, particularly when it comes to short-haul flights. The AP reports BA axed 27 flights on Monday, and sister airlines Iberia and Air Nostrum cancelled more than 320. The airline didn't offer much in the way of details until Monday when in an interview with Sky News, CEO Alex Cruz faulted a power surge. The Independent reports Cruz also said the backup system didn't kick in as it should have. Cruz brushed away a British union's assertions that the root of the IT issue stretches back a year, when "hundreds" of IT staffers lost their jobs, per the union GMB, with the work outsourced to India. Cruz countered that "they've all been local issues around a local data center who have been managed and fixed by local resources." But that doesn't stop the BBC from speculating that for BA's "Disaster Recovery Plan" to have worked, "veteran staff with knowledge of the complex patchwork of systems built up over the years" would be key, and it's possible some of those people left during last year's shift to India. GMB isn't the only one needling the airline. Mashable reports budget airline Ryanair has been poking fun on Twitter. In one tweet, it proclaims, "Breaking news: BA appoints new head of IT.... #ShouldHaveFlownRyanair"; the picture above features the line "computer says no." See its other tweet here.