More than 120 flights have been cancelled at London’s Heathrow Airport after an IT failure brought down multiple systems at Europe’s busiest airport. Many other flights are seeing delays upwards of two and three hours.
British Airways was forced to be cancel more than 100 flights alone, with Heathrow being the home of the British flag carrier, operating more flights out of LHR than any other airline. Despite this, other airlines are also affected.
Passengers who are stranded at the airport have said that they were struggling to get information from the airport or airlines and were unable to check the status of their flights.
Furthermore, passengers travelling to and from the airport on Monday morning can also expect to see a knock-on effect from the issues today, as aircraft are out of position, forcing airlines (most notably British Airways) to cancel other flights as well.
At about 10:25 pm local time, Heathrow Airport confirmed that the IT issues have been resolved. However, many flights are affected even beyond the duration of the technical problem.
The failure comes at the same time as the UK is being battered by Storm Dennis, bringing fierce winds and rain all over the country. Whilst the London area isn’t suffering as badly as many other areas, the conditions do still pose problems for flights, with crosswinds and wind sheer often exceeding the operational limits.
Heathrow Airport handled more than 80 million passengers in 2019.
Matt is a Berlin-based writer and reporter for International Flight Network. Originally from London, he has been involved in aviation from a very young age and has a particular focus on aircraft safety, accidents and technical details.
