Budget airline Wizz Air has taken the precautionary safety measure of automatically resetting 3.4 million of its customers’ passwords, following a “temporary technical irregularity” in its systems.

As an extra precaution, customers were told to ensure they are not using their Wizz Air passwords on other accounts. The airline’s move sparked fear and speculation that the company had suffered a data breach.

However, the Budapest-based company said the measure was linked to a glitch in their systems and not a cyber attack. Offering more than 600 routes across 25 cities in Central and Eastern Europe, the company is a serious competitor to other major low-budget airlines.

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In a statement, the company said: “We would like to inform you that we discovered some temporary technical irregularity in our system.

“After the detection we properly solved it, but in order to ensure the protection of your account we have taken the precautionary action to reset your password.

“For safety reasons, we kindly recommend you to avoid providing the previous passwords as new one, and to avoid using the same password in all websites where you register.”

Despite the statement, several Wizz Air customers took to social media to express their concern over the incident. A user going by the name Dr Massey Fergunson tweeted: “I assume this email for a password reset means you have been hacked.

“Should you not come clear under GDPR? It would be nice to know if my bank details have been lost.”

A spokesperson for Wizz Air said: “We can confirm that we have sent an email to our customers about a detection of a temporary technical irregularity in our system.

“At no point was any personal data compromised and resetting the passwords on the WIZZ accounts was a precautionary action. Safety remains a priority for Wizz Air, and that includes the security of our passengers’ data.”

Increasingly, airlines have been the target of hackers with big players such as British Airways being hit by cybercriminals. Last year, British Airways admitted it had been hacked and that the attackers had lifted hundreds of thousands of customers’ bank details. Similarly, the hack last year on Cathy Pacific saw the details 9.4 million of its customers stolen.