IT malfunction in air traffic control: Swiss airspace closed for hours

No take-off, landing and overflight: Due to a technical problem with the Swiss Air Traffic Control Skyguide, the airspace over the country was closed for several hours. Thousands of passengers are affected. There were problems in Prague as well.

Swiss airspace was closed to commercial aircraft for several hours in the morning. The reason for this was a technical fault in the SkyGuide air traffic control. With this, the airspace bar was lifted again at 8:30 am.

In a statement, it also said that SkyGuide is now doing everything “to keep delays as low as possible to handle flights efficiently”. Air Traffic Control previously announced that they were not speculating a cyberattack – it was a hardware problem in the IT network.

many airports affected

According to a Skyguide spokesperson, apart from Zurich airport, other Swiss airports have also been affected by the problem. A SkyGuide press release spoke of disruptions at Zurich and Geneva airports. This was confirmed by Geneva Airport on Twitter.

Overflights were diverted

Due to the disruption, there was no take-off and landing of commercial aircraft in the morning – according to SkyGuide, overflights were also not possible. European flights between Geneva and Zurich and the surrounding area, as well as early arrivals from the United States, were affected, as was the flight schedule of Lufthansa subsidiary Swiss. Short-haul flights did not start. According to Skyguide, incoming long-haul flights were diverted to various airports in neighboring countries including Lyon, Milan and Vienna.

Thousands of passengers may be affected. Many people were diverted to airports, some hundreds of kilometers away from their destinations. Others waited at the airport for departure with machines that were now at the wrong airport.

problem in prague

Also a computer failure caused delays at the international airport in Prague. A spokesman said a system for air traffic control had been temporarily shut down. At times, all starts had to be postponed. Flight operations resumed after about half an hour, but only to a certain extent.

Handling of passengers should not be obstructed. According to the information, however, there is no evidence that the problems could be related to computer failure in Switzerland.