Lufthansa: IT failure causes cancellations and delays for thousands of passengers

Thousands of air passengers are currently stranded across Europe. An IT fault at Germany’s flagship carrier Lufthansa has caused flight delays and disruption on all the airlines they own.

«There is a group-wide IT system failure,» a Lufthansa spokesperson told Reuters news agency.

Photos and videos from several airports across Germany show chaos, with thousands of stranded passengers awaiting news. On Twitter, some passengers in London reported having to manually check in. 

All domestic flights have been cancelled and international flights have also been affected by the outage. 

Lufthansa Group owns Lufthansa as well as six other airlines including Eurowings, Brussels Airlines, and Swiss and Edelweiss Air.

The airline said it is working intensively to solve the problem.

A statement on the airline’s website says: «Due to an IT failure many Lufthansa IT systems are currently not working. Because of this reason, passengers must expect disruptions in the flight program and during the check-in process. Further information will be published as soon as possible.»

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“In case your flight is cancelled we recommend not to proceed to the airport and rebook your flight on our Chatbot.»

It also said that domestic passengers within Germany affected by the outage should book a train ticket and apply for a refund on Lufthansa’s website. 

Passengers wait at a Lufthansa check in counter after an IT fault at Germany’s Lufthansa causes massive flight delays and disruptions in FrankfurtKAI PFAFFENBACH/REUTERS

What caused Lufthansa’s IT systems failure?

Lufthansa has blamed the IT failure on construction work in the Frankfurt area. 

The IT system failure comes two days ahead of planned strikes at seven German airports which are expected to lead to major disruptions.

Scandinavian airline SAS said it was hit by a cyber attack on Tuesday evening and urged customers to refrain from using its app, but later said it had fixed the problem.

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Unknown attackers cut cables belonging to Germany’s public railway in December in what was seen as the second act of sabotage against Deutsche Bahn in as many months.

Airlines cancelled more than 1,300 flights and over 10,000 were delayed in the United States last month after the breakdown of a key government computer system.

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