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. “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. 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." “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. In pictures: British Airways disruptions 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 17 show all In pictures: British Airways disruptions 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 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. 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”. 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".
– 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.