Video: Three-hour ground stop at Eindhoven Airport impacts dozens of passenger flights

Problems with air traffic systems disrupted nearly 40 passenger flights at Eindhoven Airport on Monday. Flights were unable to depart from the country's second-largest airport for three hours beginning at 11:07 a.m., and inbound flights did not land there from about 11:30 a.m. until just before 3 p.m. The civilian airport's headache was directly linked to a nationwide technical issue that affected the Dutch military, the Royal Netherlands Air Force confirmed.

Airlines scrapped six flights and delayed the departures of eleven more. Of the inbound flights, two were cancelled, ten were delayed, and eight more flights were diverted. Three of the diverted flights were sent to Rotterdam The Hague Airport, two flew instead to Maastricht, two more landed in Weeze, Germany, and one went to the Brussels Airport. That meant that an additional flight that had been scheduled to depart from Eindhoven was instead moved to Rotterdam The Hague Airport.

The first flight movement after 11:30 a.m. took place at 2:09 p.m., when a Ryanair flight to Valencia departed nearly two hours behind schedule. Up until the late morning, about a dozen flights faced minor delays, but after 11 a.m. flights began to face hours-long delays, or were crossed off the day's schedule.

The communication system used by air traffic control had become "unreliable," according to updates from European air traffic monitor Eurocontrol. The organization expected “very high delays” as a result. Initially it was thought to be unlikely that flights would take place before 5 p.m.

Operations at Eindhoven Airport are split between civilian flights and the military's Eindhoven Air Base, with the Air Force responsible for many services for the non-military portion of the airport. Other air bases, the facility in Woensdrecht, were also reportedly affected by the malfunction. An Air Force spokesperson told Omroep Brabant that the disruption was most severe at Eindhoven Air Base because it is the only air base also used for scheduled passenger flights.

"Flights can resume again. The cause of the disruption remains under further investigation," the Air Force said in an update on social media just after 3 p.m.

Last summer, Eindhoven Airport experienced long waiting times and flight delays due to problems with understaffing at the baggage handler Skytanking, with passengers sometimes waiting hours for their luggage.

One company that specializes in getting passengers payouts for delayed or cancelled flights said people were likely going to be left in the lurch this time around. “Passengers are not entitled to compensation due to force majeure,” Dutch company EUClaim wrote on social media.