British Airways: Website inaccessible amid major IT outage, leaving users unable to book flights

The technical failure began around 3pm on January 17, with customers encountering blank screens and error messages when attempting to access BA's website.

Visitors to the site were met with a message stating: “We regret to advise that this section of the site is temporarily unavailable.” The outage was reflected on the popular Down Detector website, which showed a surge in reported issues with BA.com. In an update at 5pm, the website said: “We are experiencing high demand on ba.com at the moment. Thank you for your patience.”

BA acknowledged the disruption in a statement on social media platform X, saying: “We are aware that some customers are having issues accessing the website. Our IT team are currently looking into this and trying to get this resolved as quickly as possible.” As of 6pm, the website appears to be functioning normally again.

This marks the latest in a series of technical failures for British Airways. The airline's previous major IT outage occurred less than two months ago, on November 18, 2024.

Despite these recurring issues, BA chief executive Sean Doyle has defended the airline’s ongoing £750 million investment in upgrading its IT infrastructure, claiming the improvements are beginning to show results.