System failure at Zurich Airport: Passengers wait for over two hours

“Total chaos Zurich Airport» reports a news scout (35). He was very annoyed on Friday evening. “A twelve on a scale of one to ten.” After he had completed his flight from London, a long queue awaited him in front of passport control: “There were only two to three counters in operation,” said the banker, who travels to London every two weeks on business. At first it was said that the predicted waiting time was four hours. It wasn’t that bad after all. “My wife and I stood in line for a good two and a half hours,” said the 35-year-old from Zurich.

The mood was tense and some of the people were at their wits’ end. “There were a lot of business people coming home from a long week at work, but also families with children.” One can imagine that there was great relief when he was finally home.

Basically he is satisfied with Zurich Airport. “Things usually move forward very quickly,” said the banker. Also when departing from Zurich: “Since the new scanners have been in operation, you only need a short time for the security check.”

System failure was to blame

“On Friday evening there was a system failure at the passport control machines,” said Ralph Hirt, spokesman for the Zurich Cantonal Police, which carries out border control at Zurich Airport, when asked. The outage was resolved after just under two hours. “The technicians did a good job and were able to fix the problem,” said Hirt. Since then everything has been working smoothly again. “There were waiting times during the system failure,” says Hirt. Failures are very rare. “As a rule, the system works.” Otherwise, technicians are on call 24/7 and can fix any failures.

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Jeremias Büchel (jeb) has been working in the Eastern Switzerland department in St. Gallen since 2015 and has been working as a correspondent since 2026.