British Airways’ chief information officer, Paul Coby, has publicly apologised for the bungled opening of Heathrow’s Terminal 5, admitting that the airline had suffered “serious damage” to its reputation.

“We do make mistakes. T5 is probably at the front of all your minds, and I would just like to say that I am very sorry,” he said, speaking at the Forrester IT Forum in London. “It was a tough experience for customers and a tough experience for us.”

The grand opening of the new BA terminal was heavily marred by the failure of the baggage-handling system, resulting in thousands of misplaced passenger bags and the cancellation of more than 500 flights. BA has previously blamed the incident on a combination of software failures and poor training.

Cody said the airline would refocus on staff training when planning future projects.

“When you launch a project of the scale of T5, focus on people training,” he advised. “Do as much training and formalisation as you think you might need, and then triple it.”

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Staggering IT failure at Heathrow’s Terminal 5 Poor staff training implicated in disastrous collapse of baggage-handling system