British Airways short-haul flights from Heathrow cancelled

British Airways has cancelled all short-haul flights from Heathrow Airport until midday on Saturday.

BA apologised for the cancellations, caused by ongoing technical issues.

All long-haul services at Heathrow and all flights at Gatwick and London City Airport are due to operate as planned, but customers may experience some delays, the company warned.

Anyone due to travel later was advised to check their flight status before travelling to the airport.

BA said it “anticipated further disruption during the day”.

Heathrow said it was working with BA to resolve the issue, which started on Friday.

BA’s website and app were inaccessible for several hours on Friday, leaving customers unable to book flights or check-in online.

The latest problems come after BA apologised for “letting people down” last week, when storms caused delays to unloading and loading luggage.

Ed Hall, 54, a television executive from Woodstock in Oxfordshire, said he was stuck on a plane for more than an hour after landing at London Heathrow from Brussels on Friday.

He told the PA News agency the delay was because the crew could not access any IT systems to get a stand where passengers could depart the aircraft.He said there were issues before his BA flight took off.

“We couldn’t take off as the pilot’s system that calculates weight, loads and distribution went offline and we had to go back to the gate from the runway to get a (manual) copy sent from London,” he said.

“BA is running on paper”.Once Mr Hall made it off the plane, he said luggage was piling up from passengers

stuck on other flights.

Meanwhile, Sophia Prout, 33, from London, waited at Heathrow for her BA flight to Lisbon, which was scheduled for 19:05 GMT, until it was cancelled just after 21:00 on Friday.

She told PA News that it was “frustrating” that technical issues were ongoing as she had been waiting for a total

of four hours after arriving early because she could not check in online.She said: “We’re lucky that we can turn around and go home if the flight gets cancelled, but would be nice to get an idea of when/if we will take off.”