Cyberattack Disrupts Operations at European Airports

A cyberattack has disrupted check-in systems at several European airports, leading to widespread cancellations and delays. Passengers faced long lines, missed flights, and growing uncertainty, with the situation expected to worsen at least one major hub.

Hackers targeted Collins Aerospace, the American company that supplies the ARINC SelfServ vMUSE kiosks used by passengers to check in, drop baggage, and print boarding passes. Over the past weekend, Collins Aerospace confirmed an “outage related to a cyberattack” that caused software failures at “certain airports in Europe.”

The disruption began Friday, September 19, 2025, and quickly spread. Airports in Berlin, Brussels, and London reported failures in their electronic check-in systems, forcing airline staff to fall back on manual processes such as handwriting boarding passes or setting up temporary laptop stations. The scale of the impact varied, depending on how many vMUSE devices were deployed at each airport.

Brussels Airport, the hardest hit, said airlines were asked to cancel about 140 flights scheduled for Monday. On Saturday, 25 flights were canceled, followed by 50 more on Sunday. Airport officials added that the software provider had “not yet delivered a new secure version of the check-in system.”

London’s Heathrow Airport also suffered heavy disruption. According to Flightradar24 data, 90% of its 350 flights on Sunday were delayed by 15 minutes or more, with six cancellations. The average delay was 34 minutes. On Saturday, another 13 flights were canceled, with most others running late.

Despite the chaos, the European Commission stressed that flight safety and air traffic control were not affected by the attack.

As of now, investigators have not identified who is responsible. Cybersecurity experts suggest the incident could be the work of hacktivists or state-sponsored attackers.