EBN- A technical failure in border control systems at major German airports ended on Friday evening after lasting several hours.
The cause of the technical failure in the systems controlling arrivals and departures at the airports is not yet clear.
At around 6 p.m. (local time), major airports, such as Frankfurt, Berlin and Dusseldorf, announced that the failure had ended after the control systems were restarted without problems.
The Federal Police in Potsdam announced that the Federal Criminal Police Office’s anti-jamming measures apparently had an impact on border control systems at airports.
According to the German Interior Ministry and the Federal Police, there were technical failures in the information systems managed by the Federal Office of the Federal Police (Bundesamtpolitik Information Network), which also affected the Federal Police’s border control systems.
The disruption mainly affected checks on arrivals and departures to and from countries outside the Schengen area. In some cases, passport checks had to be carried out manually. This caused long waiting times and queues at airports.
Dusseldorf airport was the worst affected, with passengers waiting there being provided with water. The impact at Frankfurt airport was minimal.
According to a Munich airport spokesman, the airport was also affected by the disruption, at least temporarily. There were also delays at border controls in Hamburg.
According to the Federal Police, 450 passengers had to wait in the terminal of Karlsruhe/Baden-Baden Airport in Baden-Württemberg. Passengers on two planes could not complete their check-in procedures due to the malfunction.
The Federal Police are not yet clear on the cause of the outage. The Interior Ministry and the Federal Police said the Federal Criminal Police Office and its partner agencies were “working hard to fix the faults and find the causes.
