Of course ina crisis no senior management will be around to talk to the media much less the poor pax. Sounds a complete nightmare. All sensible UK companies gave up outsourcing to India over the last few years because you lose control in these situations so it sounds like the BA CEo ex Sr Vuelling is responsible as he is a rabid cost cutter and frankly should be sacked since this will be a decsion at his level not the head of IT who would have put the proposal forward under instruction.
As along time global telecoms guy I can tell you same maze of copper wires ,optical fibres telco buildings and data centres that form the physical infrastructure layer that knits the internet and mega systems like airline ops and reservations together . There is no magic 'cloud' it is the same old stuff that has always been used for shipping messages around and it is not quite fit for purpose for the internet world yet . It runs faster and on a much bigger scale but it doesnt have sufficient resilience or redundancy to provide 100% assurance. In the language of this forum the Airlines are operating at 180 or 240 mins ETOPs with planes that should only be certified for 60mins . It will be a few more years and a lot more investment before we start seeing these global glitches for big corporations diminish