British Airways IT Failure: Airline Could Face Hefty Compensation Bill For Airport Chaos

British Airways could face a huge amount of compensation bill of at least £100m ($128m) following the global IT meltdown Saturday, which led to the delay and cancelations of more than 1,000 flights over the weekend. The airline said the system failure occurred due to a power supply issue, confirming there was no sign of a cyber attack.

All the British Airways (BA) flights from the Gatwick and Heathrow airports were grounded Saturday following the meltdown. Although services resumed Sunday, delays and cancelations continued to persist with almost 200 flights to and from the Heathrow Airport, England, were canceled, according to the Guardian. Several flights at the Gatwick Airport were also delayed. However, there were no cancelations.

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If the delay would have been caused by factors out of the airline’s control, the passengers would not have been eligible for compensation. However, in this case, the passengers were eligible for compensation under the EU law.

According to the law, for overnight delays, airlines are entitled to provide accommodation and transport facilities between the airport and the hotel. Airlines must also offer full refunds within seven days, or re-bookings for a flight canceled at a short notice.

Cancelation compensation amounts are £218 ($279.67) for short-haul, £384 ($492.63) for medium-haul and £523 ($670.96) for long-haul.

Passengers who reach their destination over three hours late are also entitled to compensation ranging from £175 ($224.51) - £525 ($673.52) depending upon the length of the flights and for how long it had been delayed.

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“Airlines are required to pay compensation to passengers when their flights are delayed or canceled. However, you only have the right to compensation in some circumstances," the Civil Aviation Authority stated on their website. However, the compensation is not given automatically unless customers write a complaint letter to the airline. According to the BA website, travelers cannot claim compensation if the delay is less than three hours.

Air travel experts said that the meltdown on Saturday could put the airline in a place to pay huge amounts of compensation to their customers whose flights had been delayed or canceled.

"The airline will likely face a hefty bill," Malcolm Ginsberg, editor-in-chief of Business Travel News said. “There is no question – the EU denied-boarding regulations will have to apply,” Ginsberg told the Independent. “They have broken all the rules and they will have to deal with it – it’s going to be a very expensive situation for BA. The money doesn’t really compensate passengers for the situation," he further said.

“We are continuing to work hard to restore all of our IT systems and are aiming to operate a near normal schedule at Gatwick and the majority of services from Heathrow on Sunday," A BA spokesperson told the Independent

“We are extremely sorry for the huge disruption caused to customers throughout Saturday and understand how frustrating their experiences will have been. We are refunding or re-booking customers who suffered cancelations on to new services as quickly as possible and have also introduced more flexible re-booking policies for anyone due to travel on Sunday and Monday who no longer wishes to fly to/from Heathrow or Gatwick,” the BA spokesperson added.

However, the exact amount of compensation has still not been declared or decided.

“It’s premature to put a cost figure to those problems as there are so many unknown variables. Given the magnitude of the problem, the amount is likely to be significant," air industry consultant John Strickland told the Independent.