BA boss 'emails staff to ask them not to speak about catastrophic computer failure'

The boss of British Airways (BA) has reportedly tried to stop staff commenting on the computer system failure that resulted in flights being cancelled from Gatwick and Heathrow.

Alex Cruz, chief executive and chairman of British Airways, apparently emailed members of staff urging them not to comment on the meltdown which caused severe disruption to BA flight operations worldwide.

The Spanish businessman has recorded a series of video messages which have been released via Twitter but has refused to be publicly questioned on the matter.

“Either you are part of the team working to fix this or you aren’t. We are not in the mode of ‘debriefing what happened’ but rather ‘let’s fix this mode’,” Mr Cruz said to staff, according to the The Daily Mail.

“…If you do not want to get involved or cannot get involved, I would kindly ask you to refrain from live commentary, unless it is a message of support to the thousands of colleagues that love BA as much as you do,” he added.

A spokesperson for British Airways said: “While we welcome open discussion our clear focus right now is to help our customers and get our operation back to normal.”

The airline was forced to ground all flights from Heathrow and Gatwick due to the system crash, causing chaos at both airports.

BA said it believes the failure was caused by a power supply issue, after it found no evidence of a cyber attack.