Technical glitch affects air traffic at BER

There were massive problems at Berlin Brandenburg Airport this morning. Meanwhile, no planes were able to take off or land. The reason is said to be a technical fault.

Technical problems disrupted flight operations on Friday. Berlin Brandenburg Airport (BER) Severely impaired. A total of 113 flights were cancelled at BER Airport due to computer problems. 51 arrivals and 62 departures had to be cancelled. This was confirmed to rbb by Axel Schmidt, airport spokesman.

The cause was a global IT outage at Microsoft systems. After hours of disruption, operations slowly started up again around midday. “Airport systems are back up and running and we are gradually returning to normal operations,” an airport spokeswoman said. However, there are still waiting times.

+++ More than 100 flights cancelled at BER +++

The IT problem has paralyzed computers around the world. More than 100 flights have been cancelled at BER, and passengers may travel overnight. There are also restrictions at airports, banks and other shops. Everything else in the news blog.more

Air traffic will not return to normal until Saturday morning at the earliest.

Meanwhile, flight operations at Schönefeld will continue to be affected until the evening. A company spokesman said that many passengers will therefore have to wait at the airport. Several airlines are currently trying to accommodate their passengers in nearby hotels. “It's not easy on this scale.” Airport operators do not expect operations to be fully back to normal until Saturday morning at the earliest.

Air traffic initially came to a near standstill early Friday morning. Unconfirmed reports said there was a major server failure at BER and emergency systems were said to have kicked in. Flights were diverted or cancelled, and only a handful of flights landed or took off — often with delays. Systems began working again around 10 a.m.

Night flights are possible.

Late Friday afternoon, Eurowings announced that it would also have to cancel its evening flights. It had previously been reported that planes would be able to take off and land again from 3 p.m. “We are still canceling flights mainly within Germany, even after 3 p.m.,” a spokeswoman for the airline said. This should continue to ease the burden on the affected IT system.

Meanwhile, an airport spokeswoman said airlines could request flights on Saturday nights. How much this will do remains to be seen. In principle, there is a ban on night flights at BER.

Long queues at BER

rbb correspondents on the scene reported chaotic scenes at Schönefeld Airport (Dahme-Spreewald) this morning. Luggage was unloaded from the plane, passengers had to collect it from the baggage carousels and return to check in and rebook. There were long queues at the counters.

Thomas Hoff-Andersen, BER's managing director of operations, explained to rbb that each airline has its own check-in and boarding system, so “it doesn't work very well today. This means that a very automated process is now 100 percent manual.” According to him, there have also been failures at baggage carousels.

This is what Crowdstrike Security Service does

An update from a third-party IT security provider has caused global chaos on Microsoft computers. The main culprit is a service from Crowdstrike, a company from the United States, which until today only a few people knew about.more

Incorrect IT updatesecurity service

The technical glitch is supposed to be caused by a faulty software update. IT Security Company Crowdstrike It seems that this caused applications from Microsoft Windows to crash.

The result was, among other things, disruptions to global air traffic, but other carriers, banks, media organizations and hospitals also reported problems. Many Windows PC users around the world received a “blue screen” with an error message on Friday and were no longer able to use their computers.

On Friday afternoon, Crowdstrike announced that the bug had been found and was being fixed.

There is currently no cyber attack.

According to current information, it was not a cyber attack. A spokesman for the Federal Ministry of the Interior said that according to current information, there is no evidence of a cyber attack. Kurz, the head of Crowdstrike, also wrote in his statement that it was not a cyber attack.

The media and banks were also affected.

The update bug caused problems around the world on Friday, with airlines, hospitals, broadcasters, stock exchanges and other businesses at times completely paralyzed.

The German airports of Dusseldorf, Cologne-Bonn and Nuremberg also reported flight problems, as did airlines Eurowings, Lufthansa and Ryanair. However, according to a company spokesperson, systems at Frankfurt airport are running smoothly. There were also air traffic problems in Spain, India, Switzerland and the United States. Dutch airline KLM has temporarily suspended operations.

But there were also disruptions in other areas at home and abroad. Britain's main railway company reported IT problems in Australia, while air traffic was also affected, with radio stations and supermarket chains also affected.

In Germany, those affected included Volkswagen, Sparkassen, Deutsche Bank, Allianz, Telekom and Vodafone. Operations were also disrupted at some hospitals, including Tesla and Mercedes. S-Bahn trains as well as regional and long-distance rail services are apparently operating without any IT restrictions.

Overview of regional unrest It can be found in our news blog..

Broadcast: rbb24 Inforadio, July 19, 2024, 2:30 p.m.

The comment function was closed on July 19, 2024 at 12:41 PM. Comments serve to exchange information between users and the editorial team about the topics that have been reported. Among other things, we close the comment function if the number of comments is too large to be moderated in a timely manner. We will also close the comment function if the comments are no longer relevant to the topic or if a large number of comments violate our rules. Commenting Guidelines injured.