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A cyber-related disruption at Collins Aerospace affected passenger-processing systems at several major European airports from September 19–20, 2025, with major disruption reported on September 20–21. London Heathrow, Brussels Airport and Berlin Brandenburg Airport (BER) were among the locations affected.
The incident disrupted electronic check-in, boarding-pass issuance, baggage drop and related passenger-handling processes. Airports and airlines used manual procedures, airline-owned systems and backup infrastructure to keep operating, but travelers faced long queues, delays, cancellations, missed connections and delayed baggage.
This was not reported as a failure of aircraft flight controls, runways or air-traffic-control safety systems. The available evidence points to a disruption at a technology supplier that provided passenger-processing systems to multiple airports and airlines.
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What happened in the 2025 European airport cyberattack?
Collins Aerospace, part of RTX, experienced a cyber-related incident affecting technology used for airport passenger processing. The affected platform supported functions including check-in, boarding and baggage drop.
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Because Collins supplies common-use airport technology, a single supplier-side problem could affect different airlines and airports at the same time. Staff shifted some work to manual processing or alternative systems. That kept many flights moving, but the fallback processes were slower and less scalable than normal electronic workflows.
The incident should therefore be described carefully as a cyber-related disruption affecting a technology provider. The evidence does not establish that every affected airport was independently hacked or that the entire European aviation network went offline.
Contemporaneous reporting identified Heathrow, Brussels and BER as key affected airports. Euronews reported that the incident affected check-in and boarding systems, while airport statements provide more specific information about local operations and recovery.
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| Airport | Reported impact | Workarounds and recovery |
|---|---|---|
| London Heathrow (LHR) | Heathrow warned of delays linked to a technical issue involving Collins Aerospace systems used by several airlines and airports. Heathrow later said it worked through the disruption without cancellations at the airport, although airline systems across Europe were affected. | Airport teams and airlines worked around the supplier-side issue. Heathrow’s later statement is consistent with localized disruption rather than a complete airport shutdown. |
| Brussels Airport (BRU) | Brussels said the cyberattack affecting Collins Aerospace check-in and boarding systems caused cancellations between September 20 and September 28, 2025. | Operations continued with fallback procedures, but the airport’s passenger results confirm that the disruption had an extended effect on some flights. |
| Berlin Brandenburg (BER) | BER reported effects on passenger and baggage handling. Many flights continued, but manual check-in, baggage handling and baggage reclaim could take longer. | Some airlines used their own systems or redundant infrastructure. BER later described a staged recovery involving restoration, security testing and reconnection of airlines, counters and gates. |
These are the principal airports consistently identified in the available authoritative and contemporary reporting. They should not be treated as a complete list of every airport or airline affected.
What systems were disrupted?
The confirmed operational impact involved passenger-processing systems, including:
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- Electronic passenger check-in
- Check-in desks using common-use airport technology
- Boarding-pass issuance
- Electronic baggage drop
- Passenger and baggage-handling workflows
- Some boarding-gate processes
Berlin Brandenburg’s September 22 operational update said passengers could encounter longer waits because of manual processes. It also advised travelers to use airline online check-in where available.
The reviewed sources do not establish a compromise of aircraft flight controls, aircraft navigation, runways or air-traffic-control safety systems. “Cyberattack on airports” can sound broader than the confirmed facts; the documented disruption was concentrated on getting passengers checked in, boarded and reunited with their baggage.
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What role does Collins Aerospace play?
Many airports use common-use passenger-processing systems. Instead of every airline maintaining completely separate desks, kiosks and gate equipment, multiple carriers can share airport infrastructure through a technology platform.
Collins describes its ARINC MUSE and related airport products as systems for passenger processing, including check-in and bag drop. Its airport technology materials say the products support more than 150 airports and thousands of common-use workstations. That scale helps explain how a supplier incident could have cross-border consequences.
The model has clear benefits:
- Airlines can share desks, kiosks and gates.
- Airports avoid duplicating the same infrastructure for every carrier.
- Passenger-processing services can be deployed consistently across terminals.
- Airlines and airports can operate more efficiently during normal conditions.
The trade-off is concentration risk. If a shared supplier becomes unavailable, several airlines may lose access to the same operational functions simultaneously. This does not necessarily mean the airports had identical cybersecurity weaknesses; it means they depended on a common service.
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Collins’ passenger-processing information and airport technology resources describe this common-use model in more detail.
Was it really a cyberattack?
Airports and Collins-related disclosures described the event as cyber-related or as a cyberattack affecting a service provider. That is the strongest supported description.
However, the available authoritative material does not establish:
- The precise intrusion method or initial access route
- The malware involved, if any
- Whether a ransom demand was made
- Whether passenger data was stolen
- The identity of the attacker
- That Russia or another government was responsible
Those details should not be filled in with speculation. A supplier outage and an airport network breach are related possibilities but not interchangeable claims. Heathrow’s later documentation specifically referred to the Collins Aerospace system and noted that the affected online check-in platforms were not owned or operated by Heathrow, limiting what the airport could resolve directly.
Did the attack cancel flights?
Yes, cancellations were reported, but the scale varied by airport, airline and date. Brussels Airport later said incident-related cancellations occurred between September 20 and September 28, 2025. Other locations experienced delays and operational disruption without necessarily canceling every affected flight.
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A single Europe-wide cancellation figure would be misleading unless it specified the airport, date range, whether it covered arrivals or departures, and whether the number came from an airport, airline or analytics provider.
A flight could also operate while the passenger experience remained severely disrupted. For example, a traveler might have a valid reservation but be unable to complete electronic check-in, face a long manual bag-drop queue or miss a connection because the first flight departed late.
How did airports keep operating?
Airports and airlines used combinations of:
- Manual check-in and boarding-pass processing
- Manual or alternative baggage procedures
- Airline-owned check-in systems
- Backup laptops and local systems
- Self-service kiosks where they remained available
- Redundant airport infrastructure
- Additional staff support and passenger communication
BER’s recovery description shows why restoration was gradual rather than instantaneous. After the central system was restored, the airport expected security testing and a staged reconnection of airlines, counters and gates. Its October 2 update targeted restoration of the central handling system by October 5, followed by controlled reintegration.
“Operations stable” therefore did not mean every airline, counter or baggage process had immediately returned to normal.
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- Check the airline first. Use the airline’s app or flight-status page before leaving home. An airport’s general status may not reflect a particular carrier’s check-in or baggage process.
- Complete online check-in if available. This may reduce the work needed at the airport, although passengers with checked baggage may still face a manual bag-drop queue.
- Follow instructions not to travel. If the airline explicitly tells you not to go to the airport, do not assume arriving early will solve the problem.
- Allow extra time. Manual check-in, document checks and baggage handling can take substantially longer than normal.
- Confirm the airport and terminal. This matters especially around London, where Heathrow is separate from Gatwick, Stansted, Luton and London City.
- Ask the airline about rebooking. If your flight is canceled or you miss a connection, the airline is the first point of contact for the available alternatives.
- Keep receipts. Retain records for reasonable expenses caused by disruption, but do not assume reimbursement or compensation is automatic.
- Track baggage separately. A bag may be delayed or travel separately from its owner when manual processing is in use.
Passenger-rights outcomes depend on the route, airline, cause of the disruption and applicable rules. Claims under regimes such as UK261 or EU261 should be assessed against the specific itinerary and current legal guidance; this incident alone does not guarantee compensation.
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What the incident reveals about airport resilience
The event illustrates a broader business-continuity problem: efficient shared infrastructure can create a large operational blast radius.
Centralized or cloud-managed systems can simplify maintenance and scale services, but centralization may also make an outage affect many customers at once. That does not mean centralization caused this incident; it means architecture and supplier dependency influence how widely an outage can spread.
Manual fallback is essential, but it has limits. It is slower, more prone to data-entry errors and difficult to scale during peak travel periods. Baggage is particularly challenging because check-in records, boarding status and bag-routing information must remain synchronized.
Useful resilience measures for airports, airlines and technology providers include:
- Independent fallback systems that can operate locally
- Offline or local processing capability for essential passenger workflows
- Regular exercises using manual procedures
- Segmentation between passenger-processing networks and safety-critical systems
- Clear supplier incident-notification obligations
- Defined recovery-time and recovery-point objectives
- Cross-airline coordination plans
- Consistent, rapid passenger communications
These are resilience lessons, not evidence that a particular regulator mandated each measure or that a specific airport failed to implement them.
Quick Recap
Timeline
- September 19–20, 2025: The cyber-related disruption begins to affect passenger-processing services.
- September 20–21: Major delays and cancellations are reported at affected locations.
- September 22: BER says operations are largely stable, while warning that manual processing may mean longer waits.
- September 20–28: Brussels Airport later identifies this period for cancellations linked to the incident.
- October 2: BER describes a gradual recovery involving restoration, testing and staged reconnection, with central-system restoration targeted for October 5.
- October 13: Heathrow retrospectively characterizes the incident as an unexpected Collins Aerospace IT issue affecting airline systems across Europe.
Sources
- Brussels Airport: September passenger results
- Berlin Brandenburg Airport: September 22 operational update
- Berlin Brandenburg Airport: October 2 recovery update
- Heathrow: Collins Aerospace IT issue statement
- Heathrow Finance prospectus
- Collins Aerospace passenger-processing solutions
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