British Airways (BA, London Heathrow) has sued CBRE, an American outsourcing firm, over a 2017 IT meltdown which forced the airline to cancel 672 flights and cost it EUR65 million euros (USD74 million), the Mail on Sunday has reported.

CBRE manages British Airways' data centres at London Heathrow. The carrier commissioned an independent audit into the IT collapse which affected some 75,000 passengers but has so far not published the results of the investigation.

IAG International Airlines Group CEO Willie Walsh said last year that an initial probe revealed that the system meltdown resulted from an unauthorised reconnection of servers after they had been accidentally unplugged from the power supply by an engineer. It is unclear if further investigations have validated this claim.

It is not clear how much in damages BA is seeking. The case has been filed with the London High Court.

Since the outage, the British carrier has invested in a new IT centre.