British holidaymakers are facing travel chaos at Heathrow after a cyber attack disrupted check-in and boarding systems for several major European airports.

Passengers at the UK’s largest airport are experiencing three hour long queues this morning after hackers targeted Collins Aerospace, which provides services for multiple airlines globally, on Friday night.

The company is ‘experiencing a technical issue which may cause delays for departing passengers’. Although the attack ‘is limited to electronic customer check-in and baggage drop and can be mitigated with manual check-in operations’, it added.

The timing of the attack coincides with recent Russian incursions into NATO territories, the latest taking place just hours ago when three fighter jets entered neighbouring Estonia in a ‘reckless’ and ‘brazen’ attempt to intimidate the Baltic state.

Heathrow has warned of delays and advised customers to check their flight status with their airline before travelling, while a number of departures were also cancelled. 

Brussels and Berlin have also been affected by the cyber attack, with the former confirming that 10 flights had been cancelled and 17 flights were experiencing delays of more than one hour.

It is currently unclear who is behind the incident, although Russian hackers have launched a number of devastating attacks against organisations both in the UK and the US in recent months.

Marks & Spencer, Harrods and the Co-op were all targeted by the Russia-linked group cybercrime group DragonForce earlier this year, while Moscow is also believed to be behind an ‘unprecedented’ hack on the US Department of Justice. 

Collins Aerospace itself has also previously been the target of suspected Russian hackers after ransomware group BianLian caused a huge data breach in 2023. 

Aviation and travel expert Paul Charles said the attack was ‘very clever’ as it has ‘affected a number of airlines and airports at the same time’.

‘I am really surprised and shocked by this. Collins is owned by RTX, which is the world’s biggest defence and aviation company. Collins supplies the UK government, it supplies other government’s around the world,’ he told Sky News. 

‘There will be deep concerns that their systems have been tampered with in such a way. We don’t know the exact cause of the cyber attack but it’s deeply worrying.’

Disgruntled passengers have vented their frustration over the issue, with one person writing on X: ‘Delays at LHR T4, so annoying. Charging £6 drop off, maybe they should improve their services. You just can’t travel smoothly in the UK.’ 

Another woman who arrived at Heathrow Airport this morning for a flight to Thailand was forced to wait three hours to drop her luggage off. 

‘The queues are terrible. It was an absolute skeleton staff. Out of six of the desks there were probably two people,’ she told Sky News. 

‘We were queuing for three hours and literally snaking and shuffling with this skeleton staff on the desk, and nobody was telling us then (what was happening).’

A third person told the Daily Mail they had been stuck in Brussels ‘for hours’ after leaving Africa at 4pm on Friday. ‘We are on our 7th gate change, no announcements, no drinks offered. Terrible,’ they added. 

Tereza Pultarova, a freelance journalist from London, arrived at Heathrow Airport in the early hours of the morning to catch a KLM Royal Dutch Airlines flight to Amsterdam, where she was to hop on a connection flight to Cape Town in South Africa.

‘We’ve been here since 4.30am we were supposed to be on a 6.30am flight to Amsterdam,’ Ms Pultarova said. ‘Most people on this flight have connecting flights to catch in Amsterdam from all over the world.

‘We were kind of stranded here because the weird thing is, KLM wasn’t able to issue us boarding passes digitally, and requested us to collect them at the check-in desk.

‘And then they told us that there is some sort of global issue with the system they’re using for check-in and boarding, and they have to do everything manually.

“So then they were checking in people at the rate of, like, one person per 10 minutes. I’m not exaggerating. It was just insane, the queue wasn’t moving.

‘So they checked-in like 20 people, maybe like the business class, and then told the people from the 6.30 flight to just go away, that they need to start checking in for the 8.40 flight.’

Ms Pultarova was to visit the Square Kilometre Array telescopes in the Karoo Desert for work, and added she had been looking forward to this trip for months.

She said: ‘I need to be there at 7am tomorrow, otherwise the party will leave for the Karoo Desert where the telescopes are. So yeah, you know, I need to have information, but nobody’s giving me any information, so I don’t know what to do.’

A Heathrow spokesperson said: ‘Collins Aerospace, which provides check-in and boarding systems for several airlines across multiple airports globally, is experiencing a technical issue that may cause delays for departing passengers. 

‘While the provider works to resolve the problem quickly, we advise passengers to check their flight status with their airline before travelling.  Please arrive no earlier than three hours before a long-haul flight or two hours before a domestic flight. 

‘Additional colleagues are available in check-in areas to assist and help minimise disruption. We apologise for any inconvenience.’

EasyJet said it does not expect the issue to impact its flight schedule for the rest of Saturday.

‘We’re aware of an IT system issue affecting a small number of airports. While we are currently operating as normal and do not expect this to impact our flying programme for the remainder of the day, we continue to monitor the situation closely,’ a spokesperson for the London-listed airline said. 

Meanwhile, Brussels Airport said the cyber attack meant that ‘at the moment only manual check-in and boarding is possible’.

‘The service provider is actively working on the issue and trying to resolve the problem as quickly as possible,’ it added in a statement. 

A message on the Berlin Brandenburg Airport adds: ‘Due to a technical issue at a system provider operating across Europe, there are longer waiting times at check-in. We are working on a quick solution.’

Frankfurt and Hamburg airports are not affected by the attack, a spokesperson said. An official from the operations control centre at Zurich Airport also said it had not been impacted. 

Collins Aerospace’s parent company, RTX, said in a statement: ‘We have become aware of a cyber-related disruption to our MUSE software in select airports. 

‘We are actively working to resolve the issue and restore full functionality to our customers as quickly as possible. The impact is limited to electronic customer check-in and baggage drop and can be mitigated with manual check-in operations.

Collins Aerospace has previously been targeted by hackers known as The Everest Group, who may have sold their access to the firm’s computers onto other actors on the dark web.

Just this week Everest claimed another victim, saying it had successfully hacked BMW, which operates more than 30 production sites in 15 countries worldwide. 

Russia itself if no stranger to airport cyber attacks since the start of the Ukraine war.

Just yesterday Pulkovo Airport in St. Petersburg, Russia’s second-largest air hub, said its website had been knocked offline by a cyber attack.

One day earlier Siberian regional carrier KrasAvia’s online services were hit, and national carrier Aeroflot suffered delays and cancellations in July after an intrusion claimed by a pro-Ukrainian hacker group.

In recent days Putin has been on the offensive against Ukraine. This morning Russia launched a devastating overnight strike across nine regions in the country, killing at least three people and wounding dozens more.

It came hours after Trump’s condemnation of Russia’s ‘reckless’ and ‘brazen’ attempt to intimidate the Baltic state, as three MiG-31 warplanes spent 12 minutes violating Estonian airspace on Friday.

The move sparked an emergency response from Nato, which sent in F-35 fighters to intercept the Russian aggression.

In further provocation by Putin, two Russian jets also made a show of force over a Polish oil platform in the Baltic Sea, breaching its safety zone.

A former RAF commander last night called on NATO to draw a ‘red line’ in the sand – and hinted at shooting down future Russian jets.

When asked if there was a ‘threat to Nato’ during an executive order signing in the Oval Office, Trump said: ‘I don’t love it. I don’t like it when that happens. It could be big trouble.’

The US President went on to add that he would soon be briefed on reports, and made it clear he was not pleased with the situation.