Zurich Airport is operating under restrictions after a partial failure of its apron control IT system disrupted traffic on Tuesday and continued to affect flights on Wednesday. The breakdown has forced more manual coordination of departures, stand allocation and traffic management, reducing capacity at Switzerland’s busiest hub and leading to delays and some cancellations for airlines using the airport.
The system normally helps plan departures and coordinates movements with Skyguide and Eurocontrol, but technicians were still working to restore it as of Wednesday. Additional staff were deployed to manage operations manually, while aircraft movements were curtailed, including some leisure aviation. One report said eight landings had to be handled after normal operating hours on Tuesday.
The cause of the outage remained unclear. With apron control partly impaired, turnaround handling and slot planning were affected, creating wider knock-on risks for short-haul schedules across the Swiss network and beyond.