Some of Europe’s biggest airports battled to restore normal operations yesterday after hackers disrupted automatic check-in systems, with Brussels asking airlines to cancel half of today’s flight departures due to persistent problems.
Hackers on Friday targeted check-in and boarding systems provider Collins Aerospace, owned by RTX, disrupting operations at London’s Heathrow - Europe’s busiest airport, Berlin Airport and in Brussels.
Passengers faced long queues, cancellations and delays on Saturday.
While the disruption eased significantly in Berlin and Heathrow yesterday, according to airport officials and data, delays and flight cancellations were continuing.
A spokesperson for Brussels Airport said Collins Aerospace had not yet delivered a secure, updated version of the software necessary to restore full functionality, prompting the airport to seek the flight cancellations today.
Brussels Airport said 50 of yesterday’s 257 scheduled departures had been cancelled to avoid long queues and last-minute cancellations.
A day earlier, 25 of the planned 234 outgoing flights were cancelled, the airport operator said.
RTX, which was not immediately available for comment yesterday, said on Saturday it was working to fix the issue as quickly as possible, and that the disruption could be mitigated with manual check-in operations.
It said the incident had impacted its MUSE software, which is used by several airlines.
Berlin Brandenburg Airport said yesterday some problems persisted but that a manual workaround was in place.
Heathrow said early yesterday that work was continuing to recover from the check-in system outage.
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