Lufthansa faces IT malfunction leaving thousands of passengers stranded - latest updates on UK flights

Germany’s flagship carrier Lufthansa has faced major IT failures that have caused major disruption for the airline and left passengers around the world stranded.

The company addressed the issue saying the problem was caused due to several of Deutsche Telekom’s glass-fibre cables being damaged during construction work in Frankfurt. Lufthansa confirmed that repairs were underway and would be in place until Wednesday afternoon.

Social media was flooded with customers complaining about the cancellations and extensive delays. Lufthansa, which also owns Swiss, Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines and Eurowings, were down 1.5% by mid-morning.

Lufthansa addressed the issue on Twitter and said: “Currently, the airlines of the Lufthansa Group are affected by an IT outage. This is causing flight delays and cancellations. We regret the inconvenience this is causing our passengers.”

It’s been reported that passengers with domestic flights can switch to Deutsche Bahn until Sunday. Bloomberg news reported that all flights with the airline have been affected, and that flights in the air during the outage would continue as normal.

The issues come just two days before strike action is expected to take place at seven German airports which is expected to cause more disruption including potentially at the Munich Security Conference where world leaders are expected to gather.

It’s unclear how many flights exactly have been affected; however, it has been estimated that Lufthansa usually operates close to 900 flights per day. Lufthansa operates from multiple airports across the UK including London, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Newcastle, Manchester, Liverpool and more.

The issues come a day after Scandinavian airline SAS was reported to have been hit by a cyber-attack. The airline urged customers not to use their app, however, the issue was quickly fixed and services are running as normal.