Thousands of passengers faced delays and cancellations over the weekend after a major cyber attack hit systems used for check-in and boarding at several European airports, including Heathrow, Brussels, and Berlin. Airlines were forced to check passengers in manually, leading to hours-long queues on Saturday.
The disruption spilled into Sunday, with airlines advising passengers not to travel to airports unless their flight had been confirmed. Collins Aerospace, the systems provider targeted in the attack, said it was working to resolve the issue but did not provide details on the cause. The European Commission confirmed that aviation safety and air traffic control were unaffected.
According to The Independent's Simon Calder, airlines were left 'furious' as the attack left them responsible for rebooking travel and arranging food and accommodation for disrupted passengers. Passengers and airlines alike are demanding answers about who carried out the attack and how to prevent a recurrence.
There have been unfounded claims of Russian involvement, with Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesperson Calum Miller calling on the government to 'urgently establish if Vladimir Putin is now attacking our cyber systems'. However, there is no evidence linking Russia to the attack. Cybersecurity experts note that most recent hacks have been attributed to criminal gangs seeking extortion.
Cybersecurity expert Vykintas Maknickas, CEO of NordVPN's travel eSIM app Saily, warned that the attack highlights vulnerabilities in the aviation sector's reliance on interconnected systems. He said, 'A single cyberattack on one vendor can quickly escalate into widespread disruptions across multiple airports.' He urged airlines to apply the same redundancy principles used in physical infrastructure to their digital strategies, or 'today's outage will not be the last.'
