The boss of British Airways parent, IAG, Willie Walsh has backed BA chief executive Alex Cruz as reports suggest that a data centre close to Heathrow airport suffered “catastrophic damage” in a power outage.
Cruz has come under fire in the wake of the IT meltdown that hit more than 75,000 passengers travelling on Britain’s national flag carrier.
And while BA insist that Cruz will not resign, parent company International Airlines Group told the Telegraph: “Alex has Willie’s absolute support. As far as Willie is concerned, this has nothing to do with the decisions Alex has made.”
Walsh, chief executive of International Airline Group, is yet to speak publically since the IT meltdown over the bank holiday weekend.
But more details have emerged on the cause of the problem, which is still being investigated.
BA is looking at whether the fault was down to human error or mechanical failure and is working with external power supply specialists to look at the uninterruptible power supply (UPS) at Boadicea House, one of two data centres near Heathrow airport.
It is reported that when recovering from the outage, it resumed with an uncontrollable surge of power which should have been gradual.
This, according to Telegraph sources, caused “catastrophic physical damage” to BA’s servers, which contain customer and crew information, operational details and flight paths. No data is understood to have been lost and the servers have been rebuilt.
If the power had have been restored more gradually, insiders say BA could have coped with th outage.
BA is running a full schedule of flights on Wednesday May 31.