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Technical glitch causes chaos in Vienna airport

Nearly 1,000 airline passengers were left stranded last night after a glitch in the IT system at Vienna airport caused huge delays to flights.

Technical glitch causes chaos in Vienna airport
Photo: Twitter/Judith BK

Over 100 flights in and out of the city had to be delayed or cancelled when the automated transfer of flight planning data between air traffic controllers in Brussels and Vienna broke down on Sunday afternoon.

Ten airport staff had to step in and manually enter the information to keep the system running.

The technical problems were resolved by late Sunday evening but a total of 113 flights were cancelled or delayed due to the glitch.

The airport provided 500 camp beds and booked a further 900 hotel rooms for stranded passengers who needed to stay overnight.

The airlines affected by the glitch included Lufthansa, British Airways, Polish airline LOT, Finnair and Turkish Airlines.

A spokesman for the Austrian control centre has said no other airport was affected, although passengers waiting abroad to board planes to Vienna reported delays of up to an hour to their flights.

Passengers stranded at Vienna airport complained online about the lack of staff around. In total, around 900 passengers were affected.

One passenger posted on Twitter that the Austrian Airlines desk was unmanned for two hours and there were “no [Vienna airport] staff to be seen”.

Others said the “airport is about to collapse” and described efforts to deal with the situation as “horrible crisis management”.

A spokesperson for Austrian Airlines Peter Thier said, however, bad weather in Vienna on Monday could bring “a new problem” for Vienna. “Severe weather is expected,” he said.

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