Brussels Airport underwent serious impact last weekend after a cyberattack severely disrupted the airport’s check-in systems. The new cyberattack that started late Friday resulted in the cancelation of tens of thousands of flights and extended delays for millions of passengers. Through all this turbulence, the airport still succeeded in operating about 85% of its departures as planned through all this tempestuous time.
In light of the chaos, Brussels Airport brought in extra staff to help guide passengers and speed up the process. Importantly, its self-bag drop and online check-in remained functional, bringing a bit of calm to the chaos. The airport was forced to act and ask airlines to cancel close to 140 departures that were set to leave Monday. That one cancelation put a kibosh on nearly half of the 276 flights scheduled that day.
The culprit was Collins Aerospace, an American based software systems provider. They are to blame for the wrecked, check-in-mania system. According to Brussels Airport, “because Collins Aerospace is not yet able to deliver a new secure version of the check-in system,” the airport faced considerable operational challenges. In light of this, Collins Aerospace stated that “the impact is limited to electronic customer check-in and baggage drop and can be mitigated with manual check-in operations.”
To alleviate the strain over the weekend, Brussels Airport acted quickly by cancelling 25 outbound flights on Saturday. The nightmare deepened on Sunday, forcing the cancellation of another 50 flights. The airport has provided a terrific service by keeping the airport open to most of its normal ops. It’s unclear if this boon will be here to stay.
Brussels Airport was not the only one major European airports had massive disruptions caused by the distributed denial-of-service cyberattack. Recent examples include the longer-than-normal waiting times at Berlin’s Brandenburg Airport due to a systems failure at a third party service provider. Passengers traveling through were warned to avoid the congestion by using online check-in, self-service check-in and fast bag drop services.
On a happier note, another UK airport, London’s Heathrow Airport, was reporting a return to better operations by Sunday. Officials from Heathrow reported that “work continues to resolve and recover from Friday’s outage of a Collins Aerospace airline system that impacted check-in.” They further added, “We apologize to those who have faced delays, but by working together with airlines, the vast majority of flights have continued to operate.”
Even as the situation evolves, Brussels Airport—and indeed all of Europe—should brace for long-term turbulence as the airport finds its footing in the wake of the cyberattack. The fallout from this recent incident highlights some of the vulnerabilities that airports may not think about in today’s digital age.
