Major international aviation hubs across Europe, including London’s Heathrow airport and Berlin’s Brandenburg airport, continue to face interruptions in their operations following a suspected cyberattack affecting their check-in systems, causing cancellations and delays for thousands of passengers.
Heathrow airport said early on Sunday that it is still trying “to resolve and recover” from the outage of its airline system, while apologising to its customers “who have faced delays”. More than 200,000 passengers transit through the airport, the United Kingdom’s largest and busiest, daily, and in July it recorded more than 7.9 million outbound and inbound passengers.
Meanwhile, as of early Sunday, Berlin airport announced on its website that, due to a “systems outage”, passengers could experience “longer waiting times”.
Berlin handled a total of 25.5 million passengers in 2024, with an average daily passenger count of almost 70,000.
Cyberattacks and technical disruptions have shaken the transport industry in recent years, including the temporary shutdown of Japan Airlines’ system and American Airlines in December 2024 and the suspected sabotage attack on France’s national rail operator in July 2024 in advance of the Paris Olympics.
In the recent aviation attack that hit Europe starting on Friday, Dublin and Cork airports in Ireland also reported experiencing “minor impacts” from “a Europe-wide software issue”.
“Some disruption to flights is possible as the day goes on and passengers are advised to contact their airline directly for updates on their flight,” Dublin airport said in a statement on X.
In Belgium, Brussels airport reported at least 10 flight cancellations and 17 delayed flights after reporting a “cyberattack” late on Friday.
“As a result of a cyberattack on the external service provider of the check-in and boarding systems, check-in operations at several European airports, including Brussels Airport, are heavily disrupted,” the airport said in an announcement posted on its X account late on Saturday.
“Difficult airport operations and flight cancellations” are expected until Sunday, it added.
News reports quoted the aviation watchdog Eurocontrol as stating that airports were “reporting disruptions in IT systems related to passenger handling.”
Airlines had been asked to cancel half their flights to and from Brussels between 04:00 GMT on Saturday and 02:00 GMT on Monday because of the online attack, Eurocontrol said.
“We have become aware of a cyber-related disruption to our MUSE software in select airports,” airport service provider Collins Aerospace told the AFP news agency in a statement.
“The impact is limited to electronic customer check-in and baggage drop,” added Collins Aerospace, which says it has a presence in 170 airports globally.
At Heathrow, a passenger told AFP that passengers were not given adequate information about the disruption.
“They didn’t tell us anything. It’s always crowded here, but today is like extra,” the passenger, a 41-year-old architect, said.
“If the system is down, they should delay the flight. That’s what I’m hoping,” she added, waiting in the packed check-in area at Heathrow’s Terminal 4 for a Saudia Airlines flight to Jeddah.
Another woman waiting for an Air Algerie flight to Algeria said she had been queueing for more than an hour to check in, noting that the airline was completing the process manually.
Earlier this year, a fire had also knocked out Heathrow’s power supply, shutting Europe’s busiest airport for the day, throwing the plans of tens of thousands of travellers into chaos.
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