More disruption expected at Heathrow after Sunday's IT glitch
Passengers left reading flight times on whiteboards as outage and bad weather hit the major London airport


Heathrow Airport said it is "operating as normal" after suffering an IT glitch on Sunday that saw passengers reading their flight times on whiteboards.
More than 200 flights were cancelled due to the issue, which was further exacerbated by Storm Dennis.
Digital notice boards stopped working, causing passengers to miss flights, most of which were already delayed by the bad weather.
Although the airport has said that its back up and running, more delays are expected for Monday as airlines deal with the backlog.
"Following yesterday's technical issue Heathrow's systems are stable and the airport is operating as normal," a spokesperson said. "We apologise for the inconvenience this caused our passengers. Our teams continue to closely monitor our systems and will be on hand across our terminals to provide assistance to passengers."
British Airways, which saw 20 flights cancelled on Sunday due to the problems, suggested there would be further consequences for Monday's travellers.
"The technical issue with Heathrow Airport's systems has now been resolved, but after ten hours of disruption across all terminals, we do expect to see a knock-on effect to today's short-haul schedule," the airline said in a statement to IT Pro.
Get the ITPro daily newsletter
Sign up today and you will receive a free copy of our Future Focus 2025 report - the leading guidance on AI, cybersecurity and other IT challenges as per 700+ senior executives
BA suffered similar problems in August 2019 that saw around 300 flights either cancelled or delayed at Heathrow, Gatwick and City airports. After Sunday's issues, it said it will offer customers a flexible booking policy to compensate and will deploy extra staff to help.
Other airlines are also looking to get things back to normal, though many are still having difficulties due to the strong conditions. A clip of an Eithad plane landing in the extreme weather conditions has gone viral, with the pilots praised for their composure.
"Unfortunately, many businesses still do not acknowledge the importance of modern and regularly updated IT servers which are immune to failures and outages," said Tim Dunton, the managing director of Nimbus Hosting. "Moving forward, all companies should prioritise safe, modern IT infrastructure which is resilient to technical difficulties and even extreme weather conditions."
Bobby Hellard is ITPro's Reviews Editor and has worked on CloudPro and ChannelPro since 2018. In his time at ITPro, Bobby has covered stories for all the major technology companies, such as Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook, and regularly attends industry-leading events such as AWS Re:Invent and Google Cloud Next.
Bobby mainly covers hardware reviews, but you will also recognize him as the face of many of our video reviews of laptops and smartphones.
-
Why are many men in tech blind to the gender divide?
In-depth From bias to better recognition, male allies in tech must challenge the status quo to advance gender equality
By Keri Allan
-
BenQ PD3226G monitor review
Reviews This 32-inch monitor aims to provide the best of all possible worlds – 4K resolution, 144Hz refresh rate and pro-class color accuracy – and it mostly succeeds
By Sasha Muller
-
Better together
Whitepaper Achieve more with Windows 11 and Surface
By ITPro
-
Transforming the enterprise
Whitepaper With Intel and CDW
By ITPro
-
The top trends in money remittance
Whitepaper Tackling the key issues shaping the money remittance industry
By ITPro
-
How to empower employees to accelerate emissions reduction
in depth With ICT accounting for as much as 3% of global carbon emissions, the same as aviation, the industry needs to increase emissions reduction
By Fleur Doidge
-
Worldwide IT spending to grow 4.3% in 2023, with no significant AI impact
News Spending patterns have changed as companies take an inward focus
By Rory Bathgate
-
How Kantar revamped its IT infrastructure after being sold off
Case Study Being acquired by a private equity firm meant Kantar couldn’t rely on its parent company’s infrastructure, and was forced to confront its technical shortcomings
By Rene Millman
-
Report: Female tech workers disproportionately affected by industry layoffs
News Layoffs continue to strike companies throughout the tech industry, with data showing females in both the UK and US are bearing the brunt of them more so than males
By Ross Kelly
-
Deutsche Bank wraps up Postbank IT integration after bug-laden migrations
News The IT merger is expected to generate annual savings of €300 million by 2025
By Daniel Todd