Airports across Germany have been hit by a IT outage that has sparked huge delays for arrivals outside of the Schengen zone.
The outage has affected federal police systems used to check incoming passengers, Bild newspaper reported on Friday, citing the police.
‘Our colleagues have to do a lot of things manually that the system used to do.
‘We’re still managing to get it done at the moment,’ said a police spokesperson responsible for Frankfurt airport, Germany’s busiest.
Federal police were not immediately available for comment and the cause of disruption is not yet known.
The report claimed police are carrying out security checks manually, increasing waiting times at the Frankfurt and Dusseldorf airports.
The German WDR broadcaster said Dusseldorf Airport passengers have been forced to wait for at least two hours at immigration while others were being kept on the plane.
‘At present, entry and exit are only possible with long delays for non-Schengen region,’ said a Dusseldorf Airport spokesperson.
The outage has affected federal police systems used to check incoming passengers, Bild newspaper reported on Friday, citing the police. Pictured: Germany’s national flag carrier, Lufthansa
Travellers wait, following a global outage impacting computer systems, at Berlin Brandenburg Airport, in Berlin, Germany, on Friday, July 19, 2024. File photo
According to the airport, both the main system and the backup systems have been affected and it is not known how long it will take to fix.
It is currently not possible to enter Germany from outside the Schengen area, the airport told the broadcaster.
EU destinations and destinations in the Schengen area are not affected.
The police are having to carry out all of the checks manually, local reports have stated.
There are ‘increasing waiting times and backlogs’ and all major airports nationwide are affected, according to the German Press Agency.
A Berlin Airport spokesperson added: Longer waiting times when entering the county from outside the Schengen area, but there is no halt on arrivals’.
At Munich Airport, however, there are currently no long queues, a Federal Police spokesperson told BILD.
Hamburg Airport also said: ‘We have no queues here and the outage currently has no impact on air traffic.’
Heiko Teggatz, chairman of the Federal Police Union, told the German newspaper: ‘It was only a matter of time before something like today happened.
‘It is now a threat to the entire European Schengen system.’
He also told how for three years, the authority has lacked the money to modernise its IT infrastructure.
‘We have already warned the Federal Ministry of the Interior about this many times, but Ms. Faeser has always consistently ignored it,’ he stated.
‘This is an absolutely home-made problem of the Federal Minister of the Interior and chaos waiting to happen!’