Jasper Jolly
Hundreds of thousands of passengers at Heathrow and Berlin airports faced flight delays on Sunday after a cyber-attack hit check-in desk software, while cancellations at Brussels airport suggested that disruption of Europe’s air travel would continue into Monday.
Airlines were forced to revert to slower manual check-ins from Friday night after the attack hit Collins Aerospace, which provides check-in desk technology to various airlines.
Brussels airport asked airlines on Sunday afternoon to cancel half of the departing flights scheduled for Monday. The airport said Collins was “not yet able to deliver a new secure version of the check-in system”, and confirmed a cyber-attack had taken place.
Airports urged passengers to check the status of their flights before travelling and asked them to arrive no earlier than three hours before long-haul flights and two hours before shorter journeys.
Collins said on Saturday it was dealing with a “cyber-related incident”. The hack joins a long line of attacks that have hit big companies in recent months. The UK’s largest automotive employer, Jaguar Land Rover, has been unable to produce any cars for three weeks because of a hack, while the British retailers Marks & Spencer and the Co-op were also hit by separate attacks earlier this year.
Airlines were still able to check in passengers manually.
At Heathrow 90% of more than 350 flights had been delayed by 15 minutes or more, while six were cancelled by 3pm on Sunday afternoon, according to the data company Flightradar24. The average delay was 34 minutes. Thirteen flights were cancelled on Saturday, although the vast majority of hundreds of flights were delayed.
A Heathrow spokesperson said the “underlying problem was outside our influence” but added that the airport had brought in extra staff to help cope with any disruption. It is understood that Heathrow has not mandated any cancellations for Monday, and the majority of flights are expected to be operating.
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