By Keith Kelly

Copyright independent

The cascading crisis began on Friday night when Collins Aerospace – which provides the check-in and boarding software used by airports in London, Brussels and Berlin – was targeted by a suspected cyber attack, resulting in delays to flights.

Some airlines in Dublin were still checking in passengers manually yesterday amid the continued disruption and at least 13 flights in or out of Dublin that used Terminal 2 were cancelled.

Today’s News in 90 Seconds – September 22nd

In an unrelated incident, an estimated 12,000 people were evacuated from Dublin Airport’s Terminal 2 for about 90 minutes on Saturday afternoon -after a suspicious device was found in the luggage of a passenger in Terminal 2, triggering the highest level of security response.

The evacuation began at 11.40am, with thousands of people were shepherded to set-down areas outside the terminal buildings while gardaí and the Defence Forces’ Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) team examined a piece of luggage.

The luggage was deemed safe to be removed from the terminal building to a location where it would not impact on airport operations. After further examination by the EOD team, the luggage was declared safe. Gardaí said their inquiries are ongoing.

The evacuation led to the cancellation of about a dozen flights and caused delays of up to two hours for check-in and bag drop.

Brussels, Heathrow and Berlin -airports were still battling to restore normal operations yesterday after hackers disrupted automatic check-in systems, with Brussels asking airlines to cancel half of today’s flight departures due to persistent problems.

Hackers on Friday targeted check-in and boarding systems provider Collins Aerospace, owned by RTX, disrupting operations at the airports. Passengers faced long queues, cancellations and delays on Saturday. While the -disruption eased significantly in Berlin and Heathrow yesterday, according to airport officials and data, delays and flight cancellations were continuing.

A spokesperson for Brussels Airport said Collins Aerospace had not yet -delivered a secure, updated version of the software necessary to restore full functionality, prompting the airport to seek the flight cancellations today.

For those poor souls who didn’t do online check-in or have bags to check, they may be waiting a bit

Brussels Airport said 50 of -yesterday’s 257 scheduled departures had been -cancelled to avoid long queues and last-minute cancellations.

A day earlier, 25 of the planned 234 outgoing flights were cancelled, the airport operator said.

RTX, which was not immediately available for comment yesterday, said on Saturday it was working to fix the issue as quickly as possible, and that the disruption could be mitigated with manual check-in operations. It said the incident had impacted its MUSE software, which is used by several airlines.

One passenger flying from Brussels said the disruption to his journey had been minimal.

“For me, it was business as usual. For those poor souls who didn’t do online check-in or have bags to check, they may be waiting a bit,” he said.

Berlin Brandenburg Airport said -yesterday that some problems persisted but that a manual workaround was in place.

Heathrow said early yesterday that work was continuing to recover from the check-in system outage.

It added that “the vast majority of flights have continued to operate”.