An IT failure at German airline Lufthansa caused more than 200 flight cancellations and left thousands of passengers stranded.
Thousands of travelers in Germany were stranded on Wednesday due to an IT outage that affected German airline Lufthansa. The outage was caused by a severed telecommunications cable that reportedly canceled more than 200 flights.
Lufthansa said it was “affected by an IT outage caused by construction work in the Frankfurt region” and urged passengers to rebook travel within Germany onto trains. More than 200 flights were canceled and 100 delayed due to the IT failure.
It later said its IT system had been restarted and departures from Frankfurt Airport had resumed. The airline said it expects the situation to have stabilized by the end of the evening and Frankfurt flights to be back on track by Thursday. Lufthansa apologized to customers and asked them to rebook their flights scheduled for Wednesday.
Both Lufthansa and Deutsche Bahn blamed engineering work on an extension of the railway line on Tuesday evening for the failure, during which a fiber optic cable bundle from Deutsche Telekom was severed.
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Passengers queue after an IT failure at Lufthansa caused massive flight delays and disruptions in Frankfurt, Germany. (Portal/Kai Pfaffenbach / Portal photos)
Deutsche Telekom, Germany’s largest telecommunications provider, confirmed that a cable was severed during the drilling.
The severed cable is said to have contributed to problems with passenger check-in and the boarding system on Wednesday. Incoming flights were then suspended by German air traffic control. Deutsche Telekom assured that technicians were “already on site” to solve the problem in a tweet posted Wednesday.
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“Our technicians are already on site. Due to the considerable damage and the situation on the construction site, it will be extremely difficult to fix it,” wrote the telecom provider.
Passengers had to wait after an IT failure at Frankfurt Airport in Germany. (Portal/Kai Pfaffenbach / Portal photos)
Other European airports reported cancellations as a result of the Lufthansa outage, with Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport canceling two flights and Amsterdam Schiphol Airport canceling a flight to Frankfurt.
Employees work alongside train tracks as an IT outage at Lufthansa canceled or rerouted stranded passengers and forced flights to Germany’s busiest airport in Frankfurt, Germany on Wednesday, with the airline blaming botched railway tech… (Portal/Timm Reichert / Portal photos)
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Fox News Digital reached out to Fraport for further comment, but did not receive a response in time for publication.
Portal contributed to this report.