BA cancels more than 150 flights in Bank Holiday chaos

British Airways has cancelled more than 150 flights, according to the Independent, following an IT failure on Thursday.

The majority of affected flights are domestic and European departures while many passengers are expected to experience delays.

This morning, 36 inbound flights were cancelled as pilots and planes were in the wrong place following Thursday’s IT issues.

The airline has grounded over 40 flights on Friday morning, including to and from Athens and Warsaw.

The issue is likely to affect thousands of British travellers heading off the Bank Holiday and the start of half-term.

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Thursday saw 55 outbound short-haul flights grounded while 21 inbound trips were also cancelled.

Many British travellers could be left unable to travel due to the scale of the British Airways cancellations.

British Airways must provide affected passengers with tickets on rival airlines to get them to their destination on the same day if one is available.

However, today is one of the UK’s busiest travel days with many schools breaking up for half-term combined with the start of the bank holiday.

One passenger ‘LGTechSteve’ on Twitter wrote: “Everything cancelled. Can’t book new flights, the place is chaos.”

‘StevieC’ said that they were all packed off for an Italian holiday before British Airways contacted them.

A British Airways spokesperson told Express.co.uk : “While the vast majority of our flights continue to operate today, we have cancelled some of our short-haul flights from Heathrow due to the knock-on effect of a technical issue that we experienced yesterday.

“We’ve apologised to customers whose flights have been affected and offered them the option to rebook to an alternative flight with us or another carrier or request a refund.”

British travellers are also expected to face chaos at Dover over the bank holiday weekend with long queues for many.