System failures in border control have led to long queues at airports across Germany.

As explained by an official representative of the federal police, due to a failure in the unified computer system, border control officers had to manually input passenger data. This resulted in "increased waiting times and queues" at the checkpoints. Since passengers from Schengen Area countries are checked selectively, they were less affected by the issue, the police representative noted.

In Frankfurt, Munich, and Berlin, only arriving passengers had to wait a long time to pass through the checkpoints. "However, air traffic has not been affected; everything is proceeding as planned," stated a representative of Fraport, the company that manages Frankfurt Airport. A representative from Berlin's airport reported that, despite separate queues at passport control for passengers arriving from non-Schengen countries, there was no interruption in processing those arriving in Germany. According to a spokesperson for Munich Airport, there were only brief delays, but overall air traffic remained unaffected.

The Düsseldorf airport representative mentioned that the computer system failures led to significant slowdowns in passport control for both departures and arrivals. Some passengers from Turkey, Egypt, and Qatar experienced waits of several hours. The airport representative informed the WDR broadcasting company that there is currently no way to process passengers arriving from non-Schengen countries. Some of those arriving had to wait on the planes, while passengers who disembarked were provided with water.

Similar issues also arose at the Cologne/Bonn and Dortmund airports. However, only the arrival checkpoints were affected there.

The technical failures began around noon. Both the main and auxiliary systems were impacted, emphasized the airport representative. All technical services are working diligently to resolve the issue, stated the federal police representative. It is currently impossible to predict when the system will be fully restored.