On the 15th of February 2023, an IT failure on Lufthansa Group’s entire global network temporarily halted operations at Frankfurt Airport, leaving thousands of passengers stranded and the cancellation or diversion of hundreds of flights.
More than 200 flights have been cancelled, whereas around 105 flights have been delayed at Germany’s busiest airport, with the airlines blaming the problem on third-party engineering works on a railway line extension. Apparently, during this work, a drill inadvertently severed a bundle of Deutsche Telekom’s fiber optic cables.
The Major IT Outage, which occurred on Wednesday morning, caused the passenger check-in and boarding systems at Lufthansa to seize up. This disruption prompted German air traffic control to suspend incoming flights temporarily, although normal operations have since resumed.
Most of Lufthansa Group’s domestic flights were temporarily cancelled and international flights were also affected by the outage. Besides, the German flag carrier, the IT problem also affected the operations of Austrian Airlines, Eurowings, Brussels Airlines, Swiss, and Edelweiss Air.
Photos and videos shared on the internet from several German airports showed thousands of passengers waiting to be checked in.
According to passengers, the German flag carrier was using pen and paper to manage flight boardings and was unable to process passengers’ luggage digitally.
Deutsche Telekom has confirmed that the outage was caused by damage to fiber optic cables adjacent to a railway line. Regarding the damage, Deutsche Telkom apologized to Lufthansa passengers for the inconvenience caused and said,
“Even at a depth of 5m, our glass fiber is not safe from concrete drills. After Düsseldorf at the weekend, now also in Frankfurt. Our technicians are already on site. Due to the considerable damage and situation on the construction site, the remedy will be extremely difficult.”
Know Your Rights
In case you have travel insurance yourself or through a credit card this might be the time to consult the fine print and see how it would cover you in case of trip interruption or cancellation. Be aware that many insurance providers might consider a strike as force majeure.
The European Regulation EC261 rule is a legislation that requires airlines such as Lufthansa to compensate passengers in the event of:
- Denied boarding
- Flight cancellation
- Long delay of flights (three or more hours)
Under EC261 you may be eligible for compensation up to EUR 600 if your flight is delayed by more than 3 hours or gets canceled. AirHelp helps air passengers around the world secure compensation for delayed, canceled, or overbooked flights.
How to File a Claim?
AirHelp can help you if you have a flight disruption within the EU (on any airline), leaving the EU (on any airline) or arriving into EU (on a EU airline).
AirHelp can help you to determine whether you’re eligible for compensation and claims through the easy 1-2-3 steps on their website.
Feature Image: Kai Pfaffenbach via REUTERS