Heathrow was one of the various European airports affected by delays on Saturday after a cyber attack with an electronic check-in and luggage system.
The airport said a number of flights were postponed as a “technical issue” software that was provided to various airlines.
Brussels Airport said that a cyber attack on Friday evening meant that passengers were checked in and went on board manually, and Berlin airport, Berlin airport, reported longer waiting times due to the problem.
RTX, which owns software provider Collins Aerospace, said that it was “aware of a cyber -related disruption” in his system in “Select Airports” and that it worked to solve the problem as quickly as possible.
The company added: “The impact is limited to electronic check -in of the customer and the luggage decline and can be limited with manual check -in activities.”
It said that his muse software – with which different airlines can use the same check -in agencies and entry gates at an airport, was affected instead of that of their own.
The BBC understands that British Airways work as normal with the help of a backup system, but that most other airlines that are active from Heathrow are affected.
Shortly before midnight on Saturday, Heathrow said it continued to “solve and repair” the malfunction.
It apologized to those who had had to deal with delays, but emphasized that “the vast majority of flights continued to operate”.
A spokesperson for the National Cyber Security Center said it worked with Collins Aerospace, affected British airports, the Ministry of Transport and Law Enforcement to fully understand the impact of the incident.
The European Commission, which plays a role in managing airspace throughout Europe, said that “cyber attack was closely monitoring”.
A spokesperson added that there was no indication that it had been “widespread or serious” and that it worked with airlines and airports to “restore operations and support passengers”.
Travelers at Heathrow report several hours of delays and long queues when checking in (Reuters)
According to Flight Tracker Flightaware, hundreds of flights have been delayed at the airports.
Dublin Airport said it and Cork Airport had experienced a “small impact” of the cyber attack, in which some airlines implemented manual check -in processes.
Lucy Spencer said she stood in line to check in for a Malaysia Airlines flight for more than two hours, and that staff manually tagged luggage and passed passengers over the phone.
“They told us to use the entry passes on our phone, but when we arrived at the gates, they didn’t work – they now sent us back to the check -in gate,” she told Heathrow’s Terminal 4 BBC and added that they could see hundreds of people standing in line.
Another passenger, Monazza Aslam, said that she had been on the asphalt for more than an hour “without idea when we will fly”, and had already missed her in Doha.
“I have been with Heathrow with my elderly parents since 3:00 pm,” she said and added, “We are hungry and tired.”
Johnny Lal, who would fly to Bombay on Saturday for his mother -in -law’s funeral, said that he and his family will now miss their flight.
He told the BBC that his mother “can’t go one step without her (mobility) scooter”, but that the Heathrow hair staff could not have foreseen. “They just keep telling us that the systems are no longer.”
Luke Agger-Joynes said that although queues in Terminal 3 “were much larger than normal”, the airline for his American flight and the airport “seems to be being prepared and the queues move much faster than I feared”.
He added: “They also call out specific flights and pick people from the queue to ensure that they do not miss their flights.”
Heathrow said that extra staff was at hand in check -in areas to minimize the disruption.
“We advise passengers to check their flight status with their airline before they travel to the airport and arrive no earlier than three hours before a long -distance flight or two hours for a domestic flight.”
Transport secretary Heidi Alexander said she was aware of the incident and “received regular updates and supervised the situation”.
Long queues and large crowds were shown on Saturday morning at Brussels Airport (Reuters)
EasyJet and Ryanair, who do not work from Heathrow, but are among the largest airlines in Europe, said they normally worked.
Brussels Airport said that there would be a “big impact on the flight schedule”, including cancellation and delays.
Europe’s combined aviation safety organization, Eurocontrol, said that airlines operators were asked to cancel half of their flight schedules from and to the airport between 4:00 GMT on Saturday and 02:00 on Monday due to the disruption.
With a separate incident, Dublin’s Airport 2 was reopened after a security warning. Suspicious baggage was marked on Saturday to Gardaí (Irish police), who evacuated the terminal as a “precautionary measure”.
Travel journalist Simon Calder said that “every disruption is potentially serious” at Heathrow, since it is the busiest airport in Europe, and that “departure control is a really complex company”.
He said to the BBC: “These things are all connected, so a bit of a problem in Brussels, in Berlin … People start to miss connections, planes and passengers and pilots are not where they are meant, and things can get pretty worse before they get better.”
It was not until last July that a global IT -Crash due to a defective software update from CyberSecurity Firm Crowdstrike caused disruption of aviation, earth flights in the US.
Analysts said at the time that the incident emphasized how industry could be vulnerable to problems with digital systems.
Although there are unfounded accusations that are circulating that this cyber attack was carried out by Hackers sponsored by Kremlin, all major hacks have been performed in recent years by criminal gangs who are more interested in extracting money from their victims.
Extenting gangs have earned hundreds of millions of dollars a year by stealing data or using ransomware to cause chaos and to extract ransom in bitcoin from their victims.
It is way too early to know who is behind this attack. Some experts in the field of cyber protection suggested that this could be a ransomware attack, but note that they can also be committed by the state sponsored by the state.
Collins Aerospace still has to comment on the nature or origin of the hack.
Many hackbendes have its headquarters in Russia or other former Soviet countries, some of which have ties with the Russian state.
But there have been many arrests elsewhere, while British and American teenagers are accused of performing some recent major cyber attacks against Las Vegas Casinos, M&S, Co-op and Transport for London.
Liberal Democrats MP Calum Miller said that the government should make a statement about whether she thought the Kremlin was to blame and noted that Russian war aircraft arrived in the Estonian Air Space on Friday.
