What happens when one piece of software stalls the flow of an entire continent’s air travel? Welcome, friends of FreeAstroScience. We’re a small team led by Gerd Dani—scientist, journalist, and yes, a fast-talking boy in a wheelchair who loves clean data and crowded skies. Today we unpack a real, unfolding case: a cyber incident that tangled check-ins from London to Berlin. Stay with us to the end; you’ll get the what, the why, and the what-to-do the next time systems blink.
What exactly happened at Heathrow, Brussels, and Berlin?
Airports across Europe faced check-in meltdowns after a cyber-related disruption hit Collins Aerospace’s MUSE platform, the shared software that powers electronic check-in and baggage drop for multiple airlines. Heathrow warned of delays. Brussels resorted to manual boarding. Berlin reported longer waits. Collins’ owner RTX confirmed the disruption and said it was working on a fix, limiting impact to check-in and bag drop functions .
Real consequences followed. Eurocontrol asked airlines to cancel half of flights in and out of Brussels between 04:00 GMT Saturday and 02:00 Sunday. By 11:30 BST on 20 September 2025, Heathrow showed 140+ delays, with 100+ in Brussels and 62 in Berlin, according to flight trackers cited by the BBC . Italian outlet Geopop reported similar patterns and named the target explicitly: MUSE—Multi-User System Environment—a common-use platform whose central role makes it powerful and, in moments like this, fragile .
Quick timeline at a glance
| When (local) | Where | What we know | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fri night, 19 Sep | Brussels | First malfunctions; manual check-in begins | Geopop :contentReference[oaicite:3]{index=3} |
| Sat morning, 20 Sep | Heathrow | Heathrow warns of delays tied to Collins’ software | BBC :contentReference[oaicite:4]{index=4} |
| Sat, 20 Sep | Brussels | Eurocontrol asks to cut 50% of flights | BBC :contentReference[oaicite:5]{index=5} |
| Sat, 20 Sep (11:30 BST) | Heathrow/BRU/BER | 140+ / 100+ / 62 delays, respectively | BBC :contentReference[oaicite:6]{index=6} |
Why did one vendor’s system cause such widespread chaos?
Because MUSE is a common-use system. It lets different airlines share the same desks and gates. That boosts efficiency on normal days. On bad days, it creates a single point of failure across many carriers and terminals. Heathrow’s own update pointed to Collins’ software problems and deployed extra staff to ease queues, while airlines shuffled to manual fallbacks . Geopop underscores the structural risk: central platforms concentrate operational power—and cybersecurity exposure—in one hub .
Was flight safety at risk?
No evidence suggests that. Avionics and air-traffic-control systems weren’t affected, according to technical reporting on this incident. The pain hit customer check-in and baggage workflows, not navigation or ATC. That distinction matters. Your flight can be safe and still not leave because passenger processing is stuck. That’s what today looked like .
How do attackers knock over airport check-in like this?
We don’t yet know the exact method. Several credible scenarios exist:
- Ransomware that locks core servers until a payment demand is met.
- Wiper malware that destroys data and forces rebuilds.
- DDoS on APIs, flooding endpoints so services time out.
- Credential theft that lets attackers break into cloud systems.
Security analysts flagged these as plausible routes while Collins worked to restore service. Investigations take time, and public details often lag behind the fix. Still, these are the usual suspects in aviation cybersecurity incidents targeting ground IT, not aircraft systems .
Is this like last year’s global IT crash?
Different root, similar lesson. In September 2024, a faulty software update from CrowdStrike triggered a worldwide outage that snarled aviation. That was a software supply-chain issue, not a confirmed cyberattack. Today’s event is reported as a cyber-related disruption against Collins’ MUSE. Both events expose our dependence on a few key platforms, and how quickly schedules unravel when they stumble .
What should travelers do when check-in systems go dark?
When screens freeze, humans take over. It’s slower, but it works.
- Arrive earlier than usual only if your airline confirms. Heathrow’s guidance remained “no earlier than three hours long-haul, two hours short-haul” during the disruption .
- Check your airline’s app for gate and status. Refresh often.
- Print or download boarding passes and bag tags when possible.
- Bring patience tools: snacks, water bottle, meds, phone charger.
- Know your rights: compensation rules vary by carrier and cause.
- If you miss a connection, get rebooked at the gate desk and via the app. Use both channels.
Small tip from our own field notebooks: photograph your bags before drop-off. If tags get handwritten, photos help ground staff track them faster.
What can airports and airlines do—starting Monday?
We asked, “Could one system cripple Europe’s airports?” The practical answer is not if we build for failure.
- Segment and isolate common-use systems from other critical networks.
- Fail operational, not silent: maintain robust manual DCS runbooks and train quarterly.
- Redundancy over convenience: deploy a secondary check-in stack with a different vendor or architecture.
- DDoS shields and API rate-limits tuned to surges.
- Strong identity: phishing-resistant MFA, hardware tokens, and strict least-privilege.
- Third-party assurance: continuous monitoring of vendor patches, SBOMs, and SLA-tied incident playbooks.
- Chaos drills: simulate check-in loss on a live-ops day. Measure recovery time and bag reconciliation error rates.
Here’s a simple risk framing we use in workshops:
And a quick redundancy “budget” formula:
Lower MTTR (mean time to repair) beats chasing infinite MTBF. Practice the recovery, not just the prevention.
FAQs we’re hearing in the terminal
Who’s responsible for the disruption?
Collins Aerospace acknowledged the issue and worked to restore MUSE. Airports and airlines rely on it heavily, which spread the impact across carriers and terminals .
Is my personal data at risk?
There’s no public evidence of data theft tied to today’s incident. The operational hit focused on check-in and bag drop. That said, treat any major outage as a cue to watch your accounts and be wary of phishing referencing your trip .
Will this happen again?
Yes—unless we diversify systems, rehearse manual fallbacks, and harden vendor ecosystems. The aviation network is efficient, but tightly coupled. Small cracks propagate fast .
The aha moment: efficiency without resilience is a trap
We love elegant systems. Fast queues. Shared counters. Perfect handoffs. But today reminded us that interdependence is only beautiful when it’s resilient. Standing at a desk with a handwritten tag, you could feel the old muscle memory of aviation kick in. Humans kept people moving. Safety held. Schedules bent.
This article was written for you by FreeAstroScience.com, where complex systems are explained simply, with empathy and precision. We exist to keep your mind awake, because the sleep of reason breeds monsters. Keep questioning. Keep learning./
Conclusion
A single vendor outage jammed Europe’s busiest hubs, not by touching the sky, but by stalling the doorway to the sky. We saw the hidden cost of centralization, the value of manual playbooks, and the need to measure resilience, not just uptime. Next time a kiosk hangs, remember: safety isn’t crashing—it’s queueing. And resilience isn’t magic—it’s practice.
Come back to FreeAstroScience.com for clear, human science and tech reporting that keeps your curiosity switched on.
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