At around 09h00 this morning (February 15), Lufthansa Group experienced a sudden shutdown of all systems, leading to flight delays and cancellations worldwide.
“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 tweeted.
Shares in Lufthansa were down 1,2% by 11h36 this morning.
“So far, we’re not sure if Lufthansa Group is the only one affected,” a spokesperson told AFP. They added that the Group – comprising low-cost carrier Eurowings, SWISS, Brussels Airlines and Austrian Airlines – had put together a “crisis team” to handle the technological outage.
However, another spokesperson told Reuters, “There is a group-wide IT system failure.”
Passengers have been taking to Twitter to share updates and videos of long queues, including that the failure had forced Lufthansa to board planes using pen and paper, also, the company was unable to digitally process their luggage.
The full IT failure comes two days ahead of the one-day strike planned at seven German airports, including Frankfurt and Munich. Domestic flights are expected to be the worst affected by the walkout, with tens of thousands of passengers likely to be disrupted on Friday (February 17). The strike action has been called by Germany’s second largest trade union, Ver.di (the United Services Trade Union).
