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BA check-in system checks out: Staff flung back to cruel '90s world of paper

New, intuitive tech smacked by 'computer problems'

British Airways has blamed “computer" problems for its inability to check in passengers worldwide.

The airline apologised after people took to Twitter to complain of delays and misery.

One tweeter in San Francisco scanned a letter from BA staff blaming “computer system” problems and saying staff were falling back on manual check in.

Problem seem to have begun six hours ago and appear to have hit BA bag drops and check-ins worldwide.

A spokesperson offered a brief statement this morning, saying BA was checking in customers at Heathrow and Gatwick Airport, although it is taking longer than usual. The spokesperson did not answer questions about the cause of the IT problem or say what steps BA is taking to fix things. The Daily Mail reported BA promised its IT teams were working as hard as they can to fix the problem.

The airline had rolled out a new check-in system called FLY earlier this year.

FLY was supposed to have been intuitive for staff and it replaced a legacy check-in system. However, there are reports of crashes, with the BA check-in going down four times during the summer, causing passenger delays at airports including Gatwick.

The system is believed to handle seat allocation, bags, check-in documents such as passports, and paperwork like visas for visiting countries such as the US.

BA, meanwhile, is in the process of sending up to 900 IT jobs offshore in an outsourcing move to Tata Consultancy Services.

BA is the latest major airline to have been felled by its check-in systems.

Passengers of Delta suffered massive delays checking in during August after servers running the airline’s in-flight status, information on airport screens, its delta.com website, its airport systems and even its app were taken out by a power cut.

Delta is one of the world's few airlines to own and operate a reservation system. It bought the data and system it uses from Travelport in May 2014. Richard Anderson, Delta chief executive, at the time called the Travelport system a "data and operational backbone" that runs 180 applications for Delta. ®

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