Berlin Ministry:

Airport disruptions have purely technical causes

The IT disruptions at several German airports have a purely technical cause. This was announced by the Ministry of the Interior in Berlin on Saturday. There were no signs of a hacker attack or other IT security incident.

The cause was a malfunction in an information system operated by the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA). The fault was localized "in the IT network hardware", it said. It will probably take a few more days to finally rectify it. 

The disruptions mainly affected people entering from countries outside the Schengen area, where border controls are planned, as well as people leaving for such countries. In some cases, passport controls had to be carried out manually. There were waiting times and sometimes long queues.

The disruptions occurred on Friday at Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Munich, Hamburg and Karlsruhe/Baden-Baden airports (see video above). In one case, 450 passengers had to wait in the terminal. Planes could not be processed.

The first airports gave the all-clear around 6 pm. "The BKA is working at full speed with its partner authorities to restore regular operations and find the causes," said a spokesperson.