European airports recovering after cyberattack caused flight delays and cancellations

European airports began recovering Sunday from a cyber-attack that affected baggage and passenger check-in systems, causing flight cancellations and long delays for thousands of people this weekend.

While Brussels airport reported that nearly one-fifth of departures scheduled for Sunday had been canceled, other affected air terminals said their schedules were returning to normal.

London's Heathrow Airport and Dublin Airport indicated they were already managing passenger flow while trying to fix the software problem.

Dublin airport indicated that it expected to operate normally for the remainder of Sunday.

Canceled flights and delays

At Brussels airport, hit by the cyberattack since Friday night, 45 departing flights were canceled, including six that were diverted, out of a total of 257, and delays ranged "between 30 and 90 minutes," an airport spokeswoman said Sunday.

As of Sunday morning at Heathrow, "the vast majority of flights" continued to operate thanks to collaboration with airlines, according to a statement.

All of these airports on Saturday asked passengers to contact their airlines and arrive early to catch their flights because they had to resort to hand searches in many cases.

"We are aware of a cyber-related disruption to our MUSE program at several airports," Collins Aerospace said Saturday in a brief statement, adding that the impact "is limited to the electronic check-in of customers and baggage handling."

The company did not provide further details on the circumstances or origin of the incident, AFP said.

Air traffic control is operating normally

Eurocontrol, the airline industry watchdog, indicated that "there was no air traffic control restriction on the European network" because of the incident.

Collins Aerospace claimed to be working to resolve the incident "as soon as possible." The company, which specializes among other things in aerospace data processing, is a subsidiary of U.S. aeronautics and defense group RTX.

According to its website, it provides its check-in services at 170 airports worldwide.