As of: 06/15/2022 3:07 p.m
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No take-offs, landings and overflights: Due to a technical problem at the Swiss air traffic control Skyguide, the airspace over the country was closed for several hours. Thousands of travelers are affected. There were also problems in Prague.
Swiss airspace was closed to commercial aircraft for several hours in the morning. The reason was a technical fault at Skyguide air traffic control. This lifted the blocking of the airspace again at 8:30 a.m.
In a statement, it was also said that Skyguide is now doing everything it can to “handle the flights efficiently in order to keep delays as short as possible”. Air traffic control had previously announced that they were not assuming a cyber attack – it was a hardware problem in the IT network.
Several airports affected
According to a Skyguide spokesman, in addition to Zurich Airport, other Swiss airports were also affected by the problem. A Skyguide press release spoke of disruptions at Zurich and Geneva airports. Geneva Airport had confirmed this on Twitter.
Overflights were diverted
Due to the disruption, there were no take-offs and landings of commercial aircraft in the morning – according to Skyguide, overflights were also not possible. The European flights between Geneva and Zurich and the surrounding area as well as early arrivals from the USA were affected, as was the flight schedule of the Lufthansa subsidiary Swiss. Short-haul flights did not start. According to Skyguide, the long-haul flights arriving were diverted to various airports in neighboring countries – including Lyon, Milan and Vienna.
Thousands of passengers may have been affected. Many ended up being diverted to airports, some of which were hundreds of kilometers away from their destination. Others were waiting at the airport for departures with machines that were now at the wrong airport.
Problems in Prague too
Also due to computer problems, there were delays at the international airport in Prague. A system for air traffic control was temporarily down, said a spokeswoman. At times, all starts had to be postponed. After about half an hour, flight operations could be resumed, but only to a limited extent.
The handling of the passengers did not have to be interrupted. According to the information, however, there is no evidence that the problems could be related to the computer failures in Switzerland.
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