IT failure: Lufthansa also on the ground in Leipzig and Dresden – the cause is railway construction work | free press

Thousands of Lufthansa passengers suffered delays and flight cancellations due to an IT failure on Wednesday morning. Among other things, the computer systems for checking in and boarding were affected by the breakdown, as a Lufthansa spokeswoman confirmed when asked by the “Freie Presse”. We are working intensively on a solution.

As a result, two flights each from Leipzig/Halle and from Dresden to Frankfurt/Main were canceled by midday. For the afternoon flights, the status was set to “undetermined”. Apart from these cancellations, flight operations are running normally, said a spokesman for Mitteldeutsche Flughafen AG when asked by the “Freie Presse”. Information on the flights to and from Leipzig/Halle and Dresden can be found on the homepage www.mdf-ag.com to find.

Lufthansa announced on Wednesday afternoon that it expects its flight operations to stabilize soon. The computer systems could probably be restored by the afternoon, a spokesman said. However, it will take longer for flight operations to normalize. Lufthansa faces the problem that an all-day Verdi strike has already been announced for Friday, which is expected to paralyze several airports.

According to the company, the serious IT breakdown at Lufthansa was triggered by construction work on a railway line in Frankfurt. Several fiber optic cables from Deutsche Telekom were said to have been severed by an excavator on Tuesday. According to a report by the hessenschau.de portal, the Telekom disruption affected the greater Frankfurt area, with a focus on the north. The airport is in the west of the Main metropolis. The spokeswoman was initially unable to say by when the breakdown can be repaired or to what extent passengers are affected.

Deutsche Telekom confirmed on Wednesday that the airline’s serious IT failure was caused by construction work on a railway line in Frankfurt. An excavator with an earth auger severed fiber optic lines at a depth of five meters late Tuesday afternoon, said a Telekom spokesman.

They are working “at high pressure” to repair the lines. “We are on site with everything that is available,” said the spokesman. The repairs began on Tuesday evening and continued throughout the night. Some have already been repaired. “The lines are coming back now little by little.” It is unclear when the work could be completed. However, the situation will improve significantly in the course of Wednesday afternoon, he emphasized.

A crisis team met at the Lufthansa headquarters at the airport. A still unknown number of Lufthansa aircraft could not take off. Passengers and planes were backed up in Munich and at Frankfurt Airport. 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.

Air traffic control blocked Frankfurt for landings so that the hub would not fill up with planes. Flights would be diverted to Nuremberg, Cologne or Düsseldorf, for example, said a spokesman for air traffic control. However, starts were still possible in Frankfurt.

⚠️Important information on flight disruption: As of this morning the airlines of the Lufthansa Group are affected by an IT outage, caused by construction work in the Frankfurt region. Unfortunately, this has led to flight delays and cancellations. We are working on –

– Lufthansa (@lufthansa) February 15, 2023

International flights are also affected by the landing ban in Frankfurt, so that numerous transfer passengers will miss their connections. For the Lufthansa hub in Munich, however, there was initially no blocking. In the case of longer-lasting problems, however, this is an option, according to a spokesman.

Passengers reported conditions at airports on social media on Wednesday morning. Other airlines in the Lufthansa Group should also be affected by the breakdown. These include Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines, Swiss, Edelweiss, Eurowings and Air Dolomiti. (with dpa)