Flights Grounded and Police Forced to Communicate by Text Amid IT Outage in Netherlands

A widespread IT outage in the Netherlands, traced back to a network issue at the Dutch Ministry of Defence, has caused significant disruptions across the country. The network failure led to grounded flights, communication breakdowns, and major IT failures.

At Eindhoven Airport, the Netherlands’ second-largest airport, flights were grounded from early morning, with at least 14 cancellations reported. Passengers faced severe delays as flights from budget airlines Ryanair and Transavia were cancelled. Some flights were redirected to Germany’s Weeze Airport, Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, and Brussels Airport in Belgium. Eindhoven Airport also functions as a military airport, which may have exacerbated the issue. Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport has not reported any similar problems.

The IT outage has also impacted emergency services. The coastguard reported being unreachable by phone or radio, and police officers were forced to rely on mobile phones and text messaging for communication, as their usual systems were down.

Telecom company KPN experienced a major outage affecting its mobile services, though it is unclear if this issue is related to the problems at the defence ministry. The Dutch National Cybersecurity Centre has not yet determined if the outage was caused by a cyber attack.

The Dutch Ministry of Defence confirmed the network outage and is currently investigating the cause and extent of the problems. It is unclear how long the disruption will last, and no additional details have been provided.