Passengers at several major European airports, including London’s Heathrow, faced delays and cancellations on Saturday following a cyberattack on a supplier of passenger check-in and boarding systems. The company in question is Collins Aerospace, a subsidiary of U.S.-based RTX, whose MUSE software suffered a major technical shutdown.
Europe’s busiest airport by passenger numbers, Heathrow, confirmed that departures and arrivals were disrupted, while Berlin and Brussels reported similar issues. A few hours later, Dublin and Cork also announced they were experiencing minor problems. According to data from Cirium, by Saturday afternoon a total of 29 flights had been canceled from London, Berlin and Brussels, despite 1,105 scheduled departures at the three airports.
RTX stated that the disruption was limited to electronic passenger check-in and baggage drop, but that operations could temporarily continue through manual procedures. The company did not disclose who was behind the attack, saying only that it was working intensively to resolve the issue.
Germany’s Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) confirmed it was in contact with Berlin Airport regarding “infrastructure disruptions,” while the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre said it was working with Collins Aerospace and the affected airports. Brussels announced that manual check-in and boarding procedures had been implemented, and warned passengers to expect average delays of one hour as well as additional cancellations.
Meanwhile, passengers were left without clear information. “It’s chaos and very frustrating, and we haven’t been given any instructions on what to do next,” journalist Tereza Pultarova told the BBC from Heathrow, where she was waiting for a flight to Amsterdam. Passengers in Berlin voiced similar complaints, saying they had only been told it was a “technical fault.”
This attack is part of a broader trend of sophisticated cyber threats that in recent years have targeted critical infrastructure ranging from healthcare and defense to industry and automotive manufacturing. “Supply chains are becoming easy targets for attacks that can trigger chaos,” warned Rob Jardin, Director of Digital Operations at NymVPN, in a statement to Reuters, adding that such attacks are increasingly carried out by hostile states.
