The passengers faced dozens of canceled and delayed trips, and the impact seemed to get worse in at least one important airport.
A cyber attack affected flights in Europe
The repercussions of a cyber attack that affected billing systems in several European airports extended to a full second day This Sunday. The passengers faced dozens of canceled and delayed flights, and the impact seemed to get worse in at least one important airport.
Brussels Airport, which was apparently the most affected, asked the airlines to cancel almost 140 departure flights scheduled for Monday. The airport indicated that 25 departure flights were canceled on Saturday and 50 on Sunday.
From Friday night, the main airports in Berlin, Brussels and London suffered interruptions in electronic systems that complicated billing and forced the airline personnel to resort to options such as writing shipping cards or using laptop backup computers. Other European airports were not affected by the attack.
Air chaos continues in Europe after mass cyberattacks that interrupted hundreds of flights
Cyberats affected Collins Aerospace software, a United States headquarters in the United Stateswhose systems help passengers to register, print shipping cards and luggage labels, and dispatch their luggage. The company cited on Saturday a “interruption related to cybersecurity” in its software in “selected” airports in Europe.
At the moment, it is not clear who was behind cyber attack, although experts pointed out that they could be computer pirates, criminal organizations or state actors. The European Commission clarified that the safety of aviation and air traffic control were not affected and that, for the moment, there are no indications of a generalized or severe attack. In addition, the origin of the incident continues under investigation.
While Heathrow and Brandenburg airport exits in Berlin showed signs of more fluid, more fluid, signs, more fluid, signs, signs of arrivals and outputs, Brussels Airport continued to face considerable problems.
Brussels Airport reported in an email on Sunday that asked the airlines to cancel half of the 276 exit flights scheduled for Monday “Because Collins Aerospace still cannot deliver a new safe version of the billing system.” Cancellations and delays would continue as long as the manual check-in.
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On Saturday, the Aviation and Defense Technology Company, RTX Corp., the Matrix of Collins Aerospace, explained in a statement that worked to solve the problem. “The impact is limited to electronic customer billing and luggage dispatch and can be mitigated with manual billing operations”, However, the Brussels airport clarified that it was able to maintain 85% of the outputs scheduled during the weekend thanks to the deployment of additional personnel by the airport members“ and to the fact that the automatic luggage office and the turnover online continue to operate ”.
The cyber attack affected only computer systems in billing counter, not self -service kiosks, added Ihsane Chioua Lekhli, spokesman for the Brussels airport. The equipment resorted to alternative support systems and laptops to deal with the impact.
Airports advised passengers to verify the status of their flights before traveling and use alternative billing methods.
Source: Ambito
