Air travel chaos in UK as protest shuts London airport and glitch stalls BA flights

British Airways' problem leads to frozen check-in systems at Heathrow and Gatwick while demonstrators get on to London City runway shutting the airport.

Emergency services surround protestors after they locked themselves to a tripod on the runway at London City Airport in London, closing the airport. Daniel leal-Olivas / AFP

Airline passengers in London suffered a morning of chaos Tuesday after a computer fault froze check-in systems at British Airways and the UK capital’s City airport was closed when protesters blocked the runway.

An outage that affected British Airways passengers in the United States overnight caused disruption across the carrier’s network Tuesday.

“We’ve been in line for three hours,” Erik Blangsted, told KGO-TV as he waited for his flight at San Francisco International Airport. “We’ve talked to the people who’ve offered us some cold water and some chips – and sympathy.”

Dozens of flights have been delayed at BA’s London Heathrow and Gatwick hubs and staff have been forced to issue handwritten boarding passes in order to keep flights operating.

At London City airport a group of nine activists from the Black Lives Matter campaign group chained themselves to a tripod positioned on the single landing strip, causing the terminal favoured by corporate travellers to shut to traffic.

BA later said its systems were back online at bases including Heathrow and Gatwick, although check-in is taking longer than usual due to the backlog of flights. Travellers can alternatively register via the BA website and print their own boarding passes, according the airline, which advised people to travel to their airport for the scheduled departure time.

An investigation will be initiated to determine the cause of the computer glitch, said Sophie Greenyer, a spokeswoman for the unit of London-based International Consolidated Airlines Group.

The BA outage comes after Delta Air Lines last month suffered 2,300 flight cancellations, costing about US$100 million in lost revenue, after a power-control module caught fire. A computer failure at Southwest Airlines in July also cost “tens of millions” of dollars and affected a similar number of services.

Flights at London City were disrupted from at least 8:40am UAE time, when the authorities were alerted to the runway incursions, with local press reports suggesting they may have got to the docklands site by boat.

The Metropolitan Police said officers were negotiating with the protesters while “awaiting the arrival of specialist resources” to break the locks. All nine people were later removed from the runway and arrested on suspicion of aggravated trespass, being unlawfully airside and breaching London City’s bylaws.

As of 3:20pm UAE time the airport’s website said that it was preparing to “resume operations as soon as possible”.

Heathrow suffered a security breach in July 2015 when climate-change protesters from the Plane Stupid group chained themselves together on the northern landing strip, causing the cancellation of at least 21 flights.

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