Find out more about a weekend of extreme disruptions at Heathrow Airport. The resulting pandemonium was caused by an outage of a Collins Aerospace airline management system, disrupting check-in operations. That incident, which started this past Friday, was responsible for delaying or canceling thousands of flights. By Sunday morning, over 130 flights had been delayed at least 20 minutes. On the worst day of the weekend, Saturday, 13 flights were canceled immediately.
The cyber-related disruption was not limited to just Paris’ Charles de Gaulle, as it affected other major European airports like Brussels and Berlin. Continuing in the spirit of the times, Heathrow Airport recommended that passengers show up well in advance for their flights. For international long-haul flights, plan to get to the airport not less than three hours early. For short-haul flights, arrive two hours early.
Travelers faced hours-long lines in terminal 4 of London’s Heathrow Airport, with passengers taking to Twitter to share their anger over the time spent waiting. In a tweet, flight tracking service Flightradar24 shared a massive trail of the delay and cancellation smoke plaguing the airport, showing how widespread the chaos has been.
Heathrow Airport’s social media account provided updates regarding the outage, informing travelers of the situation and recommendations. First posted 9/21/2015 at 03 AM PDT
“Work continues to resolve and recover from Friday’s outage of a Collins Aerospace airline system that impacted check-in. We apologize to those who have faced delays, but by working together with airlines, the vast majority of flights have continued to operate.” – Heathrow Airport
Despite all hands still diligently working to fix the technical problems, the snafu caused chaos for the entire weekend’s worth of operations. It’s an ongoing situation as federal, state, and local authorities continue to clear debris and ensure public safety.
