German airline Lufthansa was hit Thursday by a computer breakdown at its booking and check-in operations in airports around the world Thursday, leading to the cancellation of at least a dozen flights. A Lufthansa spokesman in Frankfurt said eight domestic flights and four from Germany to destinations elsewhere in Europe had to be cancelled. With ground personnel checking passengers in by the more time- consuming manual procedures, flights were being delayed by around 90 minutes, the spokesman said. The computer crash happened around 4:30 a.m.(0230 GMT), with the airline saying it had never before been hit by a breakdown of this magnitude. "The experts are working feverishly to stabilise the system," the spokesman said. The problems were expected to be resolved during the morning and flight operations normalised again in the afternoon. --SP 1335 Local Time 1035 GMT
