Travelers stranded at Eindhoven Airport told to "just wait until something happens"

Eindhoven Airport is crowded with stranded passengers on Wednesday morning after a major network failure halted all flights to and from the airport. Several departing flights have already been canceled, and not a single flight has landed or taken off at the airport so far today. Travelers complain about not knowing what is going on - even the digital boards with departure and arrival times have been turned off. “At the counter, they tell us: just wait until something happens,” one told Omroep Brabant.

A spokesperson for the airport could only say that Eindhoven Airport was impacted by an outage, making air traffic impossible. “We don’t know exactly what is going on and what impact it has. That will determine what the air traffic will look like for the rest of the day.”

The problem at Eindhoven Airport is related to air traffic control and its communications systems, according to Europe air traffic center Eurocontrol. The center said in an update that “Moderate to high delays” are still anticipated. Earlier it indicated these issues could be resolved by 1 p.m., but that specific time was removed from its updated bulletin released at 10:48 a.m.

Five flights scheduled to depart from Eindhoven will instead take off from other nearby airports, including Schiphol Airport, Brussels Airport in Belgium, and Weeze Airport northeast of Eindhoven just over the German border. Passengers on those flights were advised to contact their airline regarding ground transportation plans.

Additionally, four Transavia and three Ryanair departing flights were canceled, and four arriving Transavia flights were scrapped. Five inbound Ryanair flights were diverted to Weeze, including two which were initially diverted to Düsseldorf Airport in the same region.

“I think it’s a bummer, but we have to make the best of it,” Pim from Nijmegen said to the broadcaster. “We were supposed to arrive in Budapest around 11:00 a.m. But hey, we’re staying there for e few days. So if we arrive at, say, 3:00 p.m., that’s fine too. There’s nothing you can do about it anyway.” He is really annoyed about the communication. “We haven’t heard anything. At the counter, they tell us: just wait until something happens.”

His friend, Noud from Eindhoven, is hopeful. “I see that some flights have been rebooked to Weeze. Maybe we’ll be lucky, and our flight will be rebooked, too.”

The situation is really shitty, Mirjam from Malden told Omroep Brabant. “I was here at 7:00 a.m., got out of bed at 4:00 a.m. We were going to Salou,” she said, pointing to her husband. “He turned 60. But now we’re here.” Her husband is keeping his sense of humor, joking that they’ll move their holiday to “a tent on the heath soon.” Mirjam: “There’s nothing you can do about it. But it’s not nice.”

Jeroen from Rotterdam is also annoyed. “We were already here at 6:00 a.m. The three of us were supposed to go to Budapest for work. For a few days. We should have been in the air in less than an hour. Unfortunately, that’s not happening. We’ll have to wait and see. That’s all we can do.” He, too, is angry about the lack of communication. “We only hear that air traffic is delayed, that there is a disruption. That’s it. We hope to leave today. Otherwise, our planning will be messed up.”

Government services across the country are also affected by major disruptions on Wednesday morning. It is not clear whether all this is related.