IAG chief Willie Walsh claims human error caused last month’s IT meltdown

Willie Walsh, chief of British Airways' parent company said human error had caused an IT meltdown that led to travel chaos for 75,000 passengers, last month.

Walsh, chief executive of International Airlines Group (IAG), said an engineer disconnected a power supply, and a surge from its reconnection had caused the major damage when it was reconnected.

He added that there would now be an independent investigation "to learn from the experience". However, according to experts, it was too simplistic to blame a power surge.

Walsh, who spoke at an annual airline industry conference in Mexico yesterday, said: "It's very clear to me that you can make a mistake in disconnecting the power.

"It's difficult for me to understand how to make a mistake in reconnecting the power."

IAG had commissioned an "independent company to conduct a full investigation" into the IT crash and was "happy to disclose details" of its findings, Walsh said.

According to British Airways, a power surge caused the computer problem, but there was little further explanation.

However, an email leaked to the media last week suggested that a contractor engaged in maintenance work had inadvertently switched off the power supply.

The email said: "This resulted in the total immediate loss of power to the facility, bypassing the backup generators and batteries... After a few minutes of this shutdown, it was turned back on in an unplanned and uncontrolled fashion, which created physical damage to the systems and significantly exacerbated the problem."

Walsh, voiced confidence that there would be no long-lasting harm.

''Clearly there are incidents that are damaging to our reputation from time to time. We recover from these, we work hard to recover,'' he said.

''This is an industry that has to be competitive and provide services that our customers want. Where we don't do that we suffer.

''We will continue to work to make sure that we satisfy our customers every day, every week, every month of the year,'' he added.