Lufthansa Fails to Fly Due to Damage to IT System Due to Cut Broadband Cable

Lufthansa airline stranded passengers. (photo: Twitter @lufthansaNews)

JAKARTA - An IT system failure at Lufthansa airline has stranded passengers and flights to Germany's busiest airport have been canceled or diverted on Wednesday, 15 February. Meanwhile the airline blamed the railroad engineering work that damaged the broadband cable.

According to a spokesperson for the operator Fraport, More than 200 flights have been canceled so far in Frankfurt, an important international transit center and one of the largest airports in Europe.

Lufthansa expects the situation to stabilize over the night. Data from FlightAware showed 105 flights were also delayed as of 1243 GMT. Photos and videos from several German airports show thousands of passengers waiting to check-in.

"We wanted to go to a wizarding convention in England, in Blackpool. And now we are stranded here," Alexander Straub said at Frankfurt airport, quoted by Reuters.

"We have eaten some pretzels and are still waiting," said his fellow passenger, Marc Weidel.

Lufthansa and Germany's national rail operator blamed the problem on third-party engineering work on the rail line extension that occurred on Tuesday night, February 14, when the drill penetrated Deutsche Telekom's bundle of fiber-optic cables.

⚠️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

That caused the check-in and boarding of passengers at Lufthansa to jam on Wednesday morning and forced German air traffic control to suspend incoming flights, even though they have now resumed.

Passengers said on social media that the company uses pen and paper to arrange flights and cannot digitally process passenger baggage.

In a tweet, Lufthansa said: "Since this morning Lufthansa Group airlines have been affected by an IT failure, caused by construction works in the Frankfurt area."

"Two cables were repaired overnight by our technical team and many customers are back online," Deutsche Telekom said in a statement, adding that the situation continued to improve.

Deutsche Bahn later apologized to Lufthansa passengers for the inconvenience caused. The IT system failure came two days before the planned strike at seven German airports which is expected to cause major disruption, including possibly at the Munich Security Conference where world leaders are expected to gather.

Previously the Scandinavian airline, SAS, said that on Tuesday night, February 14, they were attacked by a cyberattack and asked customers not to use its app, but later said that the issue had been resolved.

Last December, unknown assailants cut cables belonging to German public railways in the second act of sabotage against Deutsche Bahn in as many months.

In the United States last month airlines also canceled more than 1.300 flights and more than 10.000 were delayed after a breakdown of the government's main computer system.