British Airways power outage last month probably cost about £80 million

British Airways owner IAG SA said a power outage that led to the cancellation of hundreds of flights last month probably cost it about £80 million (€91 million) in lost revenue and the expense of accommodating, re-booking and compensating thousands of passengers.

The figure is based on an initial assessment and IAG will update the market on the exact figure in due course, Willie Walsh, the group's chief executive said at its annual shareholder meeting on Thursday.

“It was a dreadful experience for many of our customers and we are truly sorry,” Walsh said in Madrid, adding that “BA passengers will be compensated as soon as possible”.

At least 75,000 passengers found themselves grounded over three days from May 27th as the UK carrier’s IT systems crashed. Walsh said previously that the meltdown seems to have happened after an engineer disconnected a power supply at a data centre near London Heathrow airport, causing a surge that resulted in major damage when it was reconnected.