British Airways has hit back at suggestions that outsourcing IT jobs was partly to blame for the weekend’s fiasco, after rumours suggested human error could have been a factor.
Reports in The Times suggest the problem this weekend – which grounded flights across the world and left tens of thousands stranded - revolved around an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) which delivered power to Boadicea House, a data centre.
Power was apparently temporarily lost, with some suggesting a contractor could have inadvertently switched the UPS off then compounded the problem with an uncontrolled reboot.
The Times quotes an email leaked to the Press Association from Bill Francis, head of IT at BA’s parent company International Airlines Group, which appears to back this up.
Mr Francis wrote: ‘This resulted in the total immediate loss of power to the facility, bypassing the backup generators and batteries. This meant that the controlled contingency migration to other facilities could not be applied.
‘After a few minutes of this shutdown, it was turned back on in an unplanned and uncontrolled fashion, which created physical damage to the system and significantly exacerbated the problem.’
It has also been claimed that hundreds of IT jobs at BA have been lost over the last year as they were outsourced to India. BA workers told the media that the company was warned this presented a risk.
A BA spokeswoman told Transport Network that ‘there was no data corruption or loss and IT outsourcing was not a factor’.
The Guardian reports that CBRE, a global firm whose services include maintaining mechanical and electrical services for data centres, said: 'We are the manager of the facility for our client BA and fully support its investigation. No determination has been made yet regarding the cause of this incident. Any speculation to the contrary is not founded in fact.'
An urgent investigation from BA into the incident is ongoing.
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