Lufthansa Planes Unable To Leave Germany - Texas Today

At Frankfurt Airport, more than 200 flights had to be canceled because construction work broke broadband cables and made it hard for Lufthansa to check in passengers and get them on planes.

But the airline said that things were back to normal.

Earlier on Wednesday, flights worldwide were canceled or delayed, stranding thousands of people.

The airline thinks that Frankfurt will get back to normal on Thursday.

The company said that a group of cables was accidentally cut while engineers were working on a train line in Frankfurt on Tuesday.

It told people who were taking domestic flights to book train tickets instead and said that people could use its website to ask for a refund.

Lufthansa said on Twitter, “We are quickly working on a solution.”

FlightAware, a website that keeps track of flights, says that more than 100 flights have also been late.

Some travelers said on social media that the German airline switched to organizing boarding by hand and couldn’t handle bags digitally.

One customer said on Twitter that the Frankfurt airport staff only helped people who had to check in by hand.

Others said they didn’t know how to get their money back and that the company hadn’t helped them in any way.

Air traffic controllers have rerouted flights from Frankfurt, Germany’s busiest airport. However, the problem has affected services all over the world.

Lufthansa and the main train company in Germany said the problem was caused by a Deutsche Telekom drill that cuts through a bundle of fiber optic cables.

This made Lufthansa’s check-in and boarding systems stop working on Wednesday, so German air traffic control had to stop letting flights into the country.

Since then, though, they have started up again. Since Wednesday at noon, there have been about 40 landings per hour at Frankfurt Airport, which is almost normal, according to German DFS air traffic controllers.

Deutsche Telekom said, “Overnight, our technical team fixed two cables, and now many customers can get online again.”

In a different story, German airport workers will go on strike on Friday over pay.

Last month, all domestic flights in the US had to stop because a contractor deleted files from a key computer server that pilots use.

On January 11, the Notice to Air Missions (Notam) system went down, which caused at least 1,300 flights to be canceled and more than 11,000 to be late…Read more

Source — Texas Today