Skift Travel News Blog

Lufthansa has suffered an “IT outage,” prompting the German airline group to delay and cancel all its flights.

“Currently, the airlines of the Lufthansa Group are affected by an IT outage,” the company said in a social media post on Wednesday morning. “This is causing flight delays and cancellations. We regret the inconvenience this is causing our passengers.”

The software error is affecting its global network. Lufthansa also operates Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines, Swiss and Eurowings.

The airline is now investigating whether the incident is related to a cyber attack on fellow European airline SAS, according to Bloomberg.

Various Swedish companies have recently been hit by presumed cyber attacks, including broadcaster SVT which said a group called “Anonymous Sudan” had taken credit for the attack posting on Telegram that Swedish media would be attacked as a result of Koran burnings in Sweden.

UPDATE: The airline later said the disruption was caused by construction work in the Frankfurt region.

The Lufthansa Group plans to return to its pre-pandemic level of flying sooner than expected, CEO Carsten Spohr said Tuesday.

“Until now we assumed that we would not fully return to pre-crisis levels before the middle of this decade. But in view of the present strong demand dynamic, this forecast may prove too conservative, and we may well return to pre-crisis capacity levels earlier than planned,” he said at the group’s Annual General Meeting.

A fully-recovered Lufthansa Group, which includes its namesake airline plus Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines, Eurowings, and Swiss International Air Lines, would be a big boost to the travel industry. Prior to the crisis, the group was the second largest in Europe with a 10 percent share of capacity on the continent.

The group plans to fly 85 percent of its pre-pandemic capacity in 2022.