Lufthansa IT Failure Grounds Flights Worldwide
German airline Lufthansa is ‘stabilizing’ its flight operations at Frankfurt airport after a company-wide IT outage led to a raft of flight cancellations and delays that stranded thousands of passengers in airports on Wednesday.
“Lufthansa’s flight operations are currently stabilizing. Departures are also possible again in Frankfurt. The company expects the situation to ease further over the next few hours,” the company said on Twitter Wednesday afternoon.
As reported on CNN, the international airline, one of Europe’s biggest, expects its flights to be “largely on schedule” on Thursday, it said in the tweet.
Construction work in Frankfurt had damaged the fiber optic cables of a telecoms service provider, resulting in an outage in Lufthansa’s IT system in Frankfurt airport, the company said in a statement earlier.
On Wednesday morning, Lufthansa said on Twitter: “Currently, the airlines of the Lufthansa Group are affected by an IT outage. This is causing flight delays and cancellations. We regret the inconvenience this is causing our passengers,”
Lufthansa owns carriers Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines, Eurowings and Swiss.
In a separate statement published on its website early Wednesday afternoon, Lufthansa recommended that passengers in Frankfurt avoid traveling to the city’s airport.
Passengers with domestic flights can switch to Deutsche Bahn — Germany’s national rail service — for free until Sunday, the airline added.
Shares in the company were down 0.1%, paring earlier losses.
