Geneva airport landing capacity cut due to technical glitch

This photograph shows commercial airplanes of the low cost airline EasyJet and the wing of a Swiss air lines airplane parked in front of the air traffic control tower on the tarmac of Geneva Airport on March 17, 2025. FILE PHOTO/Agence France-Presse

GENEVA — Geneva’s airport, Switzerland’s second-largest, will cut the number of aircraft that can land by 20 percent starting Monday due to a technical issue, the country’s air traffic controller said.

The reduction is a “temporary safety measure that will remain in effect until a solution to a latent technical problem can be implemented”, Skyguide, the company responsible for Swiss air traffic control, said in a statement.

“Air traffic safety has not been compromised at any time” by the technical glitch, it added.

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It said that in recent months “seven malfunctions of a system that provides radar imagery to air traffic controllers” had occurred and that “some workstations lost the image for a few seconds… mainly in Geneva.”

Skyguide said it would update its systems in the coming days, first in Geneva and then at Zurich Airport, which is Switzerland’s largest.

A taskforce has been established to monitor the situation, it said.

Geneva International Airport handled 17.8 million passengers in 2024, with 179,106 landings and takeoffs, according to official data published by the airport.

It is home to a major hub for the low-cost airline EasyJet, in addition to considerable private jet traffic.

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It is also used by numerous diplomats visiting the UN European headquarters in Geneva.

Skyguide has experienced a series of incidents in recent years.

At the end of June 2024, the company was forced to reduce its air traffic management capacity in Geneva due to an outage caused by a violent storm.

Zurich Airport was affected by a Skyguide computer outage in October 2023, preventing takeoffs for two hours.

And on June 15, 2022, Swiss airspace was closed for several hours due to a computer outage that affected air traffic control. /dl