Alex Cruz, the chief executive of British Airways, has apologised “profusely” to passengers caught up in the travel chaos at the weekend that grounded flights at Heathrow and Gatwick, but denied the disruption had anything to do with cost-cutting in the business.

Giving his first media interview since a major outage caused the airline’s IT system to collapse last Saturday, he refused to resign and said the problem was not a result of outsourcing jobs to other countries.

“I can confirm that all the parties involved around this particular event have not been involved in any type of outsourcing in any foreign country,” he told Sky News.

“They have all been local issues around a local data centre.”

He added that no BA passengers’ data had been compromised in the IT meltdown and said there was no evidence it was the result of a cyber attack, promising not to allow such an outage to happen again.

The IT failure was caused by a short but catastrophic power surge at 9.30am that affected the company’s messaging system, he said, and the backup system failed to work properly.

“We will have completed an exhaustive investigation on exactly the reasons of why this happened,” Mr Cruz said. “We will, of course, share those conclusions once we have actually finished them.

“We have no evidence whatsoever that there was any cyber attack of any sort.”

BA plans to operate about 95 per cent of its flights on Monday from the two major London hubs, but 27 departures and arrivals were already cancelled on the day, and 58 were delayed.

After the outage caused more than 1,000 flights to be delayed or cancelled, including BA’s sister airlines in Spain, Iberia and Air Nostrum, focus quickly turned to Mr Cruz’s handling of the company, having shut down the airline’s computer department last year, slashing 700 jobs in the UK.

In pictures: British Airways disruptions Show all 17 1 /17 In pictures: British Airways disruptions In pictures: British Airways disruptions A passenger looks at a British Airway plane at John F. Kennedy (JFK) international airport in New York Getty Images In pictures: British Airways disruptions British Airways planes are seen at Heathrow Terminal 5 Reuters In pictures: British Airways disruptions Passengers stand at the British Airways check-in desk after the London's Gatwick and Heathrow airports suffered an IT systems failure, at the 'Leonardo da Vinci' airport in Fiumicino, near Rome, Italy EPA In pictures: British Airways disruptions Arrivals notice boards are displayed at Heathrow Terminal 5 Reuters In pictures: British Airways disruptions People wait with their luggage at the British Airways check in desks at Heathrow Terminal 5 Reuters In pictures: British Airways disruptions Thousands of passengers face a second day of travel disruption after a British Airways IT failure caused the airline to cancel most of its services Getty Images In pictures: British Airways disruptions A woman covered in a blanket sleeps in Heathrow Airport Terminal 5 Getty Images In pictures: British Airways disruptions People sleep next to their luggage at Heathrow Terminal 5 Reuters In pictures: British Airways disruptions People sleep at Heathrow Terminal 5 in London Reuters In pictures: British Airways disruptions A woman sleeps on a luggage trolley at Heathrow Terminal 5 Reuters In pictures: British Airways disruptions People queue to enter the terminal at Gatwick Airport Reuters In pictures: British Airways disruptions People wait with their luggage at Heathrow Airport Terminal 5 Getty In pictures: British Airways disruptions Thousands of passengers face a second day of travel disruption after a British Airways IT failure caused the airline to cancel most of its services Getty In pictures: British Airways disruptions People queue with their luggage outside Heathrow Airport Terminal 5 Getty Images In pictures: British Airways disruptions People queue for check-in at Heathrow Airport Terminal 5. Thousands of passengers face a second day of travel disruption after a British Airways IT failure caused the airline to cancel most of its services Getty Images In pictures: British Airways disruptions People sleep next to their luggage at Heathrow Terminal 5 Reuters In pictures: British Airways disruptions People wait with their luggage at Heathrow Terminal 5 Reuters

He then outsourced the company’s IT systems to Indian firm Tata Consultancy Services.

GMB union’s national aviation officer, Mick Rix, claimed the chaos “could have all been avoided” if BA had not “made hundreds of dedicated and loyal IT staff redundant and outsourced the work to India”.

Experts predict the knock-on effect could continue for several days and BA is facing huge compensation costs, with reports suggesting the bill could top £100m.