Nothing works in Swiss airspace early in the morning: After a breakdown, air traffic control prohibits all take-offs, landings and overflights. But the worst suspicion is not confirmed.
After an unprecedented breakdown at the Swiss air traffic control Skyguide, the entire airspace over Switzerland was closed for several hours on Wednesday morning.
Thousands of passengers were affected – either because arriving flights were diverted to neighboring countries, or because they initially waited in vain for their departure at Geneva and Zurich airports. The breakdown was repaired around 8:30 a.m. on Wednesday. Skyguide quickly cleared the suspicion of a cyber attack. The reason was a hardware defect, as the company announced in Geneva.
Overflights over Switzerland were also prohibited. Hundreds of planes could be seen in Europe on radar maps, but a large black hole over Switzerland. Such a long disruption is highly unusual. The last major breakdown happened in 2013 due to a false fire alarm. The air traffic controllers had to leave the control rooms and no aircraft could take off or land for 20 minutes.
“A component from the network was affected,” said Skyguide spokesman Vladi Barrosa “Blick-TV”. The network itself is designed to be “redundant” – i.e. there are multiple parts – but this was not the case with this one component. “It’s like a car, if the ignition or the battery is defective, it has to be replaced before you can continue,” he said. The airspace had to be closed because the air traffic controllers could no longer see the machines on the radar.
“Skyguide regrets this incident and its consequences for its customers and partners as well as the passengers at the two national airports,” the company said.
Numerous machines were diverted
Among other things, the Lufthansa subsidiary Swiss was affected. Numerous flights to Geneva and Zurich had to be diverted. A plane from Shanghai landed in Vienna instead of Zurich, one from Dubai and Johannesburg was diverted to Milan, one from Montreal and Chicago to Basel, a spokesman said. Most of the passengers were flown to their original destinations as quickly as possible after the breakdown was repaired – also because the machines were scheduled for further flights. However, Swiss had to cancel 70 flights, and according to the information, a total of a good 7,000 passengers were affected.
Source: Stern
Jane Stock is a technology author, who has written for 24 Hours World. She writes about the latest in technology news and trends, and is always on the lookout for new and innovative ways to improve his audience’s experience.
