by Donald Wood
Last updated: 8:50 AM ET, Wed February 15, 2023
Thousands of airline passengers were stranded at German airports on Wednesday after the country's flag carrier Lufthansa experienced a group-wide IT system failure.
According to Reuters.com, Lufthansa officials said the delays and cancellations were caused by an underground engineering project taking place at a railway station in Frankfurt that accidentally cut several fiber optic cables.
Deutsche Telekom said repairing the damaged line would take until Wednesday afternoon and flight operations were expected to return to normal by Wednesday evening or Thursday morning.
Local reports claim Lufthansa employees were forced to board the planes using pen and paper, but could not digitally process luggage for passengers. Impacted carriers included Lufthansa, SWISS, Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines and Eurowings.
"As of this morning the airlines of the Lufthansa Group are affected by an IT outage, caused by construction work in the Frankfurt region," company officials told Reuters.
In total, over 123 flights had been canceled and another 127-plus were delayed through 8:30 a.m. ET on Wednesday, according to FlightAware.com. Frankfurt Airport was impacted the most by the disruptions, as all incoming flights were canceled or diverted and all planes at the facility were grounded.
Last month, the United States Department of Transportation said they have launched a "rigorous and comprehensive investigation" into the 16,700 Southwest Airlines flight cancellations over the last 10 days of December.
The government is looking to determine if the airline's decision to schedule too many flights could be considered "an unfair and deceptive practice under federal law." Officials said they would also hold the airline accountable if it fails to meet standards for refunds and reimbursements.
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