British Airways said it recovered from a technical fault much quicker than after previous incidents due to a £750 million investment in IT.

Thousands of the airline’s passengers were delayed from around 5pm on Monday when a failure meant many flights were unable to depart on time.

Customers reported being unable to check-in online, while pilots told passengers on aircraft they were being held on the tarmac as vital documents could not be processed.

The airline said key systems were back in use after about an hour, with the fault fully resolved in around 90 minutes.

No flights were cancelled or diverted as a result of the problem.

Our back-up network immediately kicked in

British Airways has suffered a number of systems failures in recent years, with major disruption in May 2023, August 2019 and May 2017.

A spokesperson for the carrier said: “A technical issue affecting some of our operational systems meant that for a short period on Monday, we were unable to depart flights as quickly as usual.

“Our back-up network immediately kicked in so our operation could continue and we were able to get our main systems back online within an hour.

“There were no cancellations on our mainline network as a result of this issue.

“We’ve made significant investment in our IT infrastructure, putting in £750 million to replace legacy systems to help prevent outages and recover more quickly when they do occur, which is exactly what happened here.

“We never want to inconvenience customers. We’ve apologised to those who did face delays and we’re grateful to them for their patience, as well as our colleagues who worked so hard to resolve this issue and support customers.”