British Airways (BA) has announced that the personal and financial details of customers’ bookings have been breached.

According to the airline, about 380,000 customer transactions were stolen in what the company’s chief executive Alex Cruz has described as a “sophisticated, malicious criminal attack,” which took place between August 21st and September 5th.

The hackers have stolen customers’ names, email addresses and credit card information such as their credit card number, expiration date and the three digit code on the back of the credit card.

Cruz told the BBC’s Today programme: “We’re extremely sorry. I know that it is causing concern to some of our customers, particularly those customers that made transactions over our BA.com website and app. We discovered that something had happened but we didn’t know what it was [on Wednesday evening]. So, overnight, teams were trying to figure out the extent of the attack.

“The first thing was to find out if it was something serious and who it affected or not. The moment that actual customer data had been compromised, that’s when we began immediate communication to our customers.”

BA Vows to Compensate Customers

BA has stated that all customers affected by the breach were contacted last night. This incident only affects those customers who bought tickets during the timeframe provided by BA. The company has already taken out adverts apologising for the breach in today’s newspapers and has said it will compensate all customers whose data was stolen.

Cruz added: “At the moment, our number one purpose is contacting those customers that made those transactions to make sure they contact their credit card bank providers so they can follow their instructions on how to manage that breach of data.”

BA Shares Take a Hit After Data Breach

Shares in the owner of BA, IAG, fell nearly 3% on Friday morning as investors weighed the impact of the hack on ticket sales. This attack, one of the most serious to hit a UK company will further tarnish the company’s reputation, which suffered a blow after an IT melt-down last year when a power surge in its control centre near Heathrow caused global flight interruptions and left thousands of passengers stranded.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has been alerted to the breach. An ICO spokesperson said the office would be making enquiries but declined to comment further as its BA investigations are at a very early stage.