More than 200 flights have been canceled at Frankfurt Airport after construction work caused damaged broadband cables to cause check-in and boarding problems at German airline Lufthansa.
Thousands of passengers around the world have had their flights canceled or delayed.
The company announced on Tuesday that a bundle of cables had been accidentally severed during construction work on a railway line in Frankfurt.
It has asked customers flying on domestic flights to book train tickets.
The company said customers could request a refund on its website and expects the issues to stabilize by evening.
“We are working quickly on a solution,” Lufthansa tweeted.
More than a hundred flights have also been delayed, according to data from flight-tracking website FlightAware.
“Lufthansa asks affected passengers to check the status of their flight via the company’s app or website before arriving at the airport. Passengers with domestic flights can switch to Deutsche Bahn until Sunday,” the airline said in a statement.
“We regret the inconvenience caused to our passengers,” added a company spokesman.
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Air traffic controllers have diverted flights from Germany’s busiest airport, Frankfurt, but the problem has impacted global services.
Lufthansa and Deutsche Bahn blamed the error on a drill that severed a bundle of fiber optic cables belonging to Deutsche Telekom.
This resulted in Lufthansa’s passenger check-in and boarding systems being blocked on Wednesday, prompting German air traffic control to suspend incoming flights.
However, these have since resumed, with around 40 landings per hour at Frankfurt Airport since midday on Wednesday. The German air traffic controllers from DFS said it was almost normal traffic.
Deutsche Telekom said in a statement, “Two cables have already been repaired overnight by our technical team and many customers are already back online,” and said the situation is improving.
Irrespective of this, German airport workers are said to be on strike on Friday over pay.
Domestic flights in the US were grounded last month after a contractor deleted files on a key computer server used by pilots.
More than 11,000 flights were delayed and at least 1,300 were canceled on January 11 after the Notam (Notice to Air Missions) system went offline.
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