Lufthansa passengers were left stranded on Wednesday after the airline experienced a system failure.
The German airline blamed the failure on the breaking of multiple fibre optic cables by underground engineering work at a Frankfurt train station.
According to information received from Deutsche Telekom, Lufthansa estimated that repairs would not be completed until Wednesday afternoon, but by early evening, it anticipated flight operations to be stable.
Thousands of travellers were visible in pictures and videos from various airports across Germany.
However, the shares of Lufthansa, which also owns Swiss, Austrian, Brussels, and Eurowings, were down 1.25%.
On social media, travelers complained that the company’s breakdown had forced it to organize jet boarding with pen and paper and that it was unable to digitally process luggage.
“As of this morning, the airlines of the Lufthansa Group are affected by an IT outage, caused by construction work in the Frankfurt region.” Lufthansa said in a tweet
The Frankfurt Airport website states that reports of Lufthansa flight delays began at 7:00 GMT, and approximately 120 inbound and outgoing flights at the airport were canceled.
All incoming aircraft to Frankfurt Airport will be cancelled or diverted, the airport announced.
Lufthansa planes were parked at Frankfurt Airport, according to German air traffic controllers, making it impossible for other aircraft to park there.
Bloomberg News reported that Lufthansa had canceled every flight, but the airline informed Reuters it was unable to confirm that.
A spokesperson stated, “There are still flights in the air, they will not be brought to the ground,”
At 1023 GMT, Lufthansa had 40 flights in the air, compared to 105 flights for rival national airline Air France and 121 flights for British Airways, according to data from the aviation website Flightradar24.
Two days prior to planned strikes at seven German airports, which are anticipated to cause significant disruptions, including possibly at the Munich Security Conference where world leaders are anticipated to convene, an IT system failure occurred.
The Scandinavian airline SAS warned customers not to use its app after it experienced a cyberattack on Tuesday evening, but later stated that the issue had been resolved.
In what was believed to be a second instance of sabotage against Deutsche Bahn in as many months, unidentified intruders cut cables belonging to Germany’s public train in December.
Following the failure of a crucial federal computer system last month, airlines in the United States cancelled more than 1,300 flights and caused over 10,000 delays.
