Lufthansa and other airlines canceled flights on Wednesday after a system failure hit the operator of Frankfurt airport, Germany's largest hub.

Airport operator Fraport said a database system used by airlines to deploy staff went down from around 0100 to 1130 GMT on Wednesday.

"The problem is now solved," the spokesman said.

In total 70 flights of a planned 1,560 were canceled, including 23 cancellations at Frankfurt's main airline, Lufthansa.

Lufthansa said it had to reduce the number of arrivals at the airport which meant passengers also missed connecting flights and flights were delayed as a result.

The affected system contains information on aircraft positions, which is used to send ground staff to planes.

"All this had to be carried out manually during the failure," Lufthansa said, adding that it had to ask flight crews to use radios or telephones instead.