At Heathrow, Berlin and Brussels, 29 flight departures and arrivals had been cancelled as of 11.30 GMT (7.30pm, Singapore time), aviation data provider Cirium said. In total, 651 departures were scheduled from Heathrow, 228 from Brussels and 226 from Berlin on Saturday.
Officials in Brussels said there had been four flight diversions, as well as “delays on most of the departing flights.”
Brussels Airport said it had asked airlines to cancel half of their scheduled departing flights on Sunday to avoid long queues and late cancellations, signalling that the disruption would continue through the weekend.
A European Commission spokesperson said there were currently no indications of a “widespread or severe attack” and that the origin of the incident was still under investigation.
These kinds of sweeping outages are typically the result either of ransomware attacks, where online extortionists paralyse corporate networks in the hope of payment, or deliberate digital sabotage.
Rafe Pilling, director of threat intelligence at cybersecurity company Sophos, said the impact of the incident highlighted “the fragile and interdependent nature of the digital ecosystem underpinning air travel.”
“We’ve seen huge impact across retail and currently automotive in the UK this year,” he said. “The threat is significant and very real.”
Several breach-tracking websites have previously said that Collins Aerospace was hit by ransom-seeking hackers in 2023. The company did not return a message seeking comment on those allegations or details about Saturday’s incident.
