Flights grounded, services disrupted as Netherlands hit by major IT glitch

The country's largest airport, Amsterdam's Schiphol, has not reported any problems. (Photo/Reuters)

Flights were grounded, civil servants were locked out of their computers and police officers resorted to texting one another in the Netherlands on Wednesday as a network outage at the Ministry of Defence caused major IT failures across the country.

The extent and the cause of the problems are not yet known, but a spokesperson for the Dutch Defence Ministry confirmed the issue can be traced back to one of their systems.

"We are experiencing an outage in one of our networks at the defence department and it is a network that is also used by other parts of the Dutch government," Laurens Bos said.

The National Cybersecurity Center said it is not yet known if the outage is a result of a cyber-attack.

Travellers at the southern Eindhoven Airport were stuck since early morning with flights from budget carriers Ryanair and Transavia cancelled. "There is no air traffic at all and we have very little information about the cause," spokesperson Judith de Roy said.

The airport also serves as a military airport operated by the Ministry of Defence. The country's largest airport, Amsterdam's Schiphol, has not reported any problems.

Some passengers from Eindhoven were bussed to Brussels Airport, 100 miles (approximately 161 kilometres) south of Belgium.

The alarm and the communications systems for emergency workers were also impacted. The country's Coast Guard said they were not reachable by phone or radio. Police officers used mobile phones and text messaging to stay in contact rather than their normal communication system.

Hospitals, the country's tax office and the national emergency number 112 were not reporting problems.

Telecom company KPN was also experiencing a major outage with its mobile service, but the company said it wasn't clear if the problem was related to the issues at the defence ministry.

The defence ministry said it was unclear how long the outage will last.

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Source: TRT