Due to a computer failure at the Skyguide air traffic control service, flights to and from Switzerland were suspended for hours and Swiss airspace was closed.
Geneva and Zurich suspended flights for hours, but Geneva Airport has announced that air traffic is gradually resuming.
Skyguide said a technical malfunction in the early hours of Wednesday morning meant that Swiss airspace had to be closed to traffic for “security reasons”.
Some flights were diverted to Milan in northern Italy.
Skyguide spokesman Vladi Barrosa told the Tagesanzeiger news website that the problem appears to be a hardware failure and they don’t believe their system has been hacked. The company later tweeted that the “technical malfunction at Skyguide was resolved” and the airspace closure was lifted at 08:30 (06:30 GMT).
A Flightradar image of air traffic throughout Western Europe showed a significant hole in air traffic over Switzerland early on Wednesday.
Air traffic continued normally at Basel-Mulhouse Airport, because although Basel is in Switzerland, the airport itself is on French territory and is monitored by French air traffic control.
Geneva Airport announced that several flights had been canceled but that air traffic had gradually resumed from 8:30 a.m.
A passenger in Zurich posted a picture of all the flights that couldn’t take off.
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