Islamabad: Airports across Germany were hit by an IT outage, causing huge delays for arrivals outside of the Schengen zone.
According to Germany’s state-owned media outlet DW, the outage has affected federal police systems used to check incoming passengers.
“Our colleagues have to do a lot of things manually that the system used to do,” the German police reportedly said.
“We’re still managing to get it done at the moment,” said a police spokesperson responsible for Frankfurt airport, Germany’s busiest.
Federal police were not immediately available for comment and the cause of disruption is not yet known, DW reported.
“There is currently a nationwide IT disruption,” a federal police spokesperson said by phone, forcing officers to manually process passengers arriving from outside the passport-free Schengen area.
“There is currently a nationwide IT disruption.” – federal police spokesperson
The cause was not immediately known.
Long queues
According to multiple reports, passengers are currently experiencing long queues trying to enter the country as a result of the issue.
At Munich Airport, however, there were currently no long queues, the British tabloid Daily Mail reported.
A Hamburg Airport official also said they have no queues there and the outage currently has no impact on air traffic.
Heiko Teggatz, chairman of the Federal Police Union, told a German newspaper, “It was only a matter of time before something like today happened.”
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“It is now a threat to the entire European Schengen system.”
He also told how for three years, the authority has lacked the money to modernise its IT infrastructure.
“We have already warned the Federal Ministry of the Interior about this many times, but Faeser has always consistently ignored it,” he stated.
“This is an absolutely home-made problem of the Federal Minister of the Interior and chaos waiting to happen!”
