AGetting up early was followed by a rude awakening. Thousands of passengers in Zurich and Geneva had to experience this on Wednesday morning. After arriving at these two Swiss airports, they found that their flights to anywhere in the world had either been canceled or postponed. The reason: Skyguide air traffic control had closed the entire Swiss airspace to traffic due to a technical glitch in its own systems. Skyguide lifted the blockage at 8:30 a.m. The technicians had previously managed to fix the defect.
As a result, the situation at Swiss airports slowly eased again. In Zurich, 38 incoming and 39 outgoing flights had to be canceled in the morning hours, a spokeswoman said. 15 planes that were already on their way to Switzerland were diverted to other airports, including Basel-Mühlhausen, Frankfurt, Lyon, Milan and Vienna. From 10 a.m. onwards, 100 percent of the handling capacity was reached again, according to the spokeswoman.
However, the airlines themselves took a little longer to get back into the planned flight mode. The top dog Swiss, a subsidiary of Lufthansa, expected a “normalization of flight operations” during the course of the day. However, there could still be delays. Passengers should check the airline’s website for updates, Swiss said.
Massive reputation damage
The company Skyguide, which is almost 100 percent owned by the Swiss state, was contrite. “We very much regret this incident,” said Skyguide spokesman Vladi Barrosa in an interview with the FAZ.
According to Barrosa, neither human error nor a cyber attack was responsible for the glitch. “A hardware component in our network in Geneva was defective and had to be replaced. Several systems were affected by this.” Therefore, for safety reasons, the decision was made to close the airspace. After the faulty component had been replaced, the systems could be restarted.
Such a breakdown is very unusual – and according to experts, should not actually happen. For Skyguide, which also controls part of the southern German and Austrian airspace, this means enormous reputational damage. There has never been an incident of this magnitude in Switzerland, which is a symbol of quality and reliability. When the airspace had to be closed for 20 minutes in 2013, the reasons were more trivial: the air traffic control center had to be evacuated for a short time due to a false fire alarm.
According to Skyguide, it is not liable for the damage caused to passengers as a result of the breakdown: “The airlines bear the risk that the airspace may be closed. The weather can also be to blame for that,” said Barrosa. Affected passengers would have to contact their respective airline.
Nevertheless, Skyguide does not just want to sit back and relax. “We will analyze exactly why the hardware defect occurred,” said Barrosa. In addition, work is being done on setting up a virtual IT center that will connect the two separate air traffic control centers in Geneva and Zurich. If one of these two centers fails, as is the case in Geneva, Skyguide could monitor air traffic from another control room. Thanks to this “backup”, it would then no longer be necessary to close the airspace. However, according to current planning, this CHF 250 million project will not be completed until 2028.
With 1,500 employees at 14 locations, skyguide is responsible for both civil and military air traffic control in Switzerland and neighboring countries. It monitors the airspace as well as taxiing manoeuvres, take-offs and landings at airports. The company is celebrating the centenary of air traffic control in Switzerland this year. As of this Wednesday, any party mood at the headquarters in Geneva is likely to have disappeared.
