Air travel across Europe was thrown into disarray this weekend after a cyberattack crippled check-in and boarding systems at some of the continent’s busiest airports, including London Heathrow, Brussels and Berlin. The disruption left thousands of passengers stranded in long queues, with airlines forced to fall back on manual procedures.
Brussels Airport confirmed that its automated systems had been rendered inoperable overnight, forcing staff to check in passengers by hand. The operator warned of “a large impact on the flight schedule” and said delays and cancellations were inevitable. At least 10 flights were cancelled and 17 others delayed by more than an hour at Brussels alone.
Heathrow, Europe’s busiest hub, acknowledged delays linked to what it described as a “technical issue” at a third-party supplier. Berlin airport also reported longer waiting times at check-in, blaming the outage on “a technical issue at a system provider operating across Europe.”
The disruption has been traced to Collins Aerospace, a company that provides check-in and boarding systems to several global airlines. Its parent company, RTX, said it was aware of “cyber-related disruption” and was working urgently to restore functionality. “The impact is limited to electronic customer check-in and baggage drop and can be mitigated with manual operations,” RTX said in a statement.
The outage quickly spilled into scenes of chaos inside terminals. At Heathrow, long lines snaked around departure halls as staff with tablets tried to process passengers. Travelers reported confusion, little information from airlines, and mounting anxiety as delays stretched into hours.
One passenger, Derine, 19, described circling Heathrow’s runway five times before landing, only to find her connecting flight to Ireland in doubt. “There has not been much information about my next flight,” she said. “When we arrived, the plane just circled the runway about five times. We weren’t let off the plane for half an hour.”
Another traveler bound for Mumbai said his flight had been pushed back by ninety minutes. “It doesn’t affect me much, but I feel sorry for all the families who are about to sit on a long flight,” he told reporters.
A mother flying to Canada with her husband, children and grandchildren said the family had been anxiously checking their phones all morning. “We haven’t seen my son in over a year, so I really hope it’s not delayed,” she said.
For others, the bottleneck at security was the most frustrating part. A woman traveling with her son to Zanzibar said that while their delay was only about an hour, the ordeal at Heathrow left her exhausted. “There were huge queues, and the machines weren’t working, so everyone was just swarming the staff with iPads. It was chaos.”
Airports urged passengers to allow more time for travel, advising arrivals at least two hours before Schengen-zone flights and three hours for international departures. Heathrow reiterated that passengers should not arrive earlier than this to avoid compounding the congestion. “Additional colleagues are available in check-in areas to assist and minimise disruption,” a spokesperson said. “We apologise for any inconvenience.”
The incident underscores the vulnerability of aviation infrastructure to cyberattacks. With the industry heavily reliant on integrated digital systems for check-in, baggage handling and boarding, even brief outages can cascade into significant delays across multiple countries. For now, passengers face the uncertainty of manual operations and the hope that systems can be fully restored before the weekend’s peak travel rush.
