Stansted IT glitch causes thousands to miss their flights

Travelers at London Stansted Airport, Essex, were left bound to terra firma on Sunday 11 May after an IT issue led to massive delays across several airlines.

In a statement to the PA news agency, the airport said only that there was an “IT outage” that occurred when the terminal was particularly busy on Sunday morning. The airport told ITPro that it was still investigating the root cause of the IT issue “but it looks like it may be related to internet connectivity”.

The airport confirmed to ITPro that while the issue affected "a host of airport systems ... the main ones were airline check-in, baggage and security.

The problem was first identified at 2.30am, according to The Standard and wasn’t resolved until for eight hours, meaning those turning up for early morning flights were caught in the middle of the outage. While Stansted Airport told ITPro that no flights were cancelled during the outage, by the time the systems had recovered thousands of people had nevertheless missed their flights.

While Jet2 and Tui chose to delay their flights and wait for passengers, according to Mail Online Ryanair “dispatched near-empty planes on time to avoid delays later in the day”. The website also reported that some people who were flying with Jet2 and Tui chose to leave Stansted and rebook for flights leaving from alternative airports, rather than wait in the crowds of people hoping to get help from their airlines..

This is far from the first IT incident to cause chaos at a major airport. In 2020, an IT problem at London Heathrow Airport – the busiest in the UK – meant digital departure and arrival boards stopped working, causing passengers to miss already delayed flights.

A 2019 IT outage caused major headaches for British Airways passengers departing Terminal 5 of the same airport, due to a supplier-side issue.

Meanwhile, in November 2015, planes were grounded at Paris Orly airport after a piece of software linking air traffic control with the French met office that ran only on Windows 3.1 malfunctioned.