The airline experienced a serious IT system failure on Wednesday.
(Photo: Reuters)
Dusseldorf Thousands of passengers suffered delays and flight cancellations on Wednesday due to a global IT glitch at Lufthansa. The computer systems for boarding, among other things, had not been operational since the morning. A spokeswoman in Frankfurt explained that they are working intensively on a solution. A crisis team met at the Lufthansa headquarters at the airport.
As a result, an as yet unknown number of flights were delayed or cancelled. Passengers and planes were backed up in Munich and at Frankfurt Airport. The German air traffic control is therefore no longer directing any machines to Frankfurt. This is to prevent the hub from filling up, as a spokesman for air traffic control confirmed on Wednesday. The machines would be diverted to other airports such as Nuremberg, Cologne or Düsseldorf.
The passengers were also not allowed into the waiting machines by means of a tally sheet because, according to the staff, important information about the departure was missing. All domestic German flights were initially canceled and passengers were asked to switch to the train.
Lufthansa: Disruptions also affect Eurowings, Austrian, Brussels and Swiss
According to a Lufthansa spokesman, the cause of the disruption lies with Deutsche Telekom. They carried out construction work on their network in Frankfurt and damaged an important cable in the process. The result is IT disruptions, which Lufthansa is now massively affected.
The two German hubs in Frankfurt and Munich are not the only ones affected by the IT outage. The disruptions affect the airline’s entire international air traffic. This also included subsidiaries Eurowings, Austrian, Brussels and Swiss. Delays and cancellations are currently also occurring in Lufthansa freight traffic.
Some of the group’s planes still took off in the morning, with the suitcases missing due to check-in problems. “Because of the IT problems, we couldn’t read the barcodes on the luggage,” reports a spokesman. However, it will be delivered later in any case.
In the meantime, however, there are almost no more take-offs and landings by the Lufthansa airlines. “We are working feverishly on a solution,” it said on request in Frankfurt. However, this would be difficult without Deutsche Telekom repairing the damage.
With agency material
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