Cost-cutting Spanish boss gags BA staff: Chief who outsourced 700 IT jobs to India before computer meltdown emails staff to tell them to refrain from 'live commentary' on the crisis which hit 300,000 passengers

The beleaguered boss of British Airways tried to gag staff from commenting on the computer meltdown that has plunged hundreds of thousands of passengers into chaos.

Alex Cruz, who was brought in to cut costs at the airline, has so far refused to be publicly questioned on the crisis that has ruined families’ holidays.

Instead, the Spanish businessman has chosen to record a series of video messages issued via BA’s Twitter account.

Mr Cruz's email asking his workers not to comment 

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British Airways boss Alex Cruz (pictured)

Guys,

either you are part of the team working to fix this or you aren’t. We are not in the mode of ‘debriefing on what happened’ but rather ‘let’s fix this mode’.

I have been answering some emails from colleagues (thank you for the support) and I just finished a video for media and another for all of us. I suppose you will have seen our Twitter account and BA.com.

Now, your interest on today’s events is well noted. I am wondering if you would like to help out? Either LHR or LGW or anyone of our stations could use you, now. If you indeed can, drop me a message and I will connect you or go straight to the airport and make yourself available. I am sure they will appreciate your involvement.

In the meantime, 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.

Thanks.

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The airline was unable to rebook flights yesterday after all of its IT systems went down, meaning the work had to be started afresh on Sunday (pictured, people asleep at Heathrow)

But instead of coming clean, he issued an email for BA staff urging them not to speak publicly about the crisis.

In a message seen by many staff as a veiled threat, he wrote: ‘Guys, either you are part of the team trying to fix this or you aren’t. We are not in the mode of “debriefing on what happened”, but rather “let’s fix this mode”.’

He asked employees to volunteer to come in to work at Heathrow and Gatwick to tackle the backlog of flights and passengers but added: ‘If you don’t want to get involved or you cannot get involved, I would kindly ask you to refrain from live commentary.’

The airline has confirmed the email is genuine and said the intention is to encourage staff to volunteer to deal with the problems.

A source at BA said: ‘There was no intention to silence people. While we welcome open discussion our focus now is to help our customers and get our operation back to normal.’ 

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While British Airways IT systems are now running again, the airline has not said how long disruption will last for (pictured, people asleep on the floor at Heathrow on Sunday)

Mr Cruz made a controversial decision last year to shut down the airline’s British computer department with the loss of 700 jobs around the country.

He is thought to have been paid £830,000 last year.

The tasks of designing and managing the firm’s IT systems were contracted out to the Indian firm Tata Consultancy Services.