Prague Airport suspends takeoffs due to control system failure

Vaclav Havel Airport halted all scheduled departures for tens of minutes today after a failure occurred in the Top Sky air traffic system after noon, airport operator Letiste Praha and the Air Navigation Services (RLP) said on Twitter without specifying the reasons for the outage.

The airport allowed only arrivals of flights already bound for Prague during the shutdown.

Traffic was resumed to a limited extent at 13:45.

Passenger check-in continues as usual, but delays can be expected, announced Letiste Praha spokeswoman Klara Diviskova.

Air traffic controllers are working intensively on removing the system failure, announced RLP spokesman Richard Klima.

Czech controllers started using the Top Sky air traffic control system from French company Thales this year. The system is also used in Austria, Sweden and Denmark.

A technical problem in air traffic control also halted traffic at airports in Switzerland for several hours this morning, but flights have already resumed by now, according to information from the Skyguide office. Referring to Skyguide, the DPA news agency said the reason was a hardware problem in the IT network. The office ruled out a cyberattack.

Source: Prague Airport and CTK