How can BA's CEO blame a power failure?

Does he even realize how much this message screams incompetence? They have been in business 43 years (with this name - they existed longer than that).

Are we to believe that they didn't bother engineering an absolutely mission critical system (which just proved its criticality beyond doubt, having paralyzed the company) to survive a datacenter failure? Is he so utterly blind to the facts as to point to an issue which should have been addressed in the 80's and imagine this puts them in the clear? He is not merely likely to be lying on record (in case said redundancies do indeed exist, and the new staff, 12 months after taking over, still doesn't know what to do ), he is actually making things worse by implying a colossal negligence in not addressing something for a generation. This is incredibly damaging to the company - it erodes trust in every aspect of their operations, even those likely not impacted, like passenger safety and plane maintenance - and completely uncalled for.

Or am I wrong in my assumptions and perspective, and the general public will simply accept the story acritically, and move on with life, unconcerned?

Sorry for the absolutely loaded questions - didn't know how else to formulate my thoughts. And no, I have absolutely nothing to do with BA, other than having occasionally been their passenger (my god improve the food).