Flights at German airport disrupted after suspect objects sighted

Flights at Germany’s Leipzig/Halle Airport, a major cargo hub, were disrupted during the night after a sighting of a flying object was reported and another object was found near a runway, police said Wednesday.

Several flights, including one passenger plane, were diverted to other airports after the sighting of the flying object near the airport shortly before midnight.

Police spokesperson Olaf Hoppe told Euronews that, at the same time as the sighting, an object was found in the area of the southern runway which the federal police examined. He declined to confirm that a drone had been sighted.

Police said an anti-explosives robot was deployed to check the other object near the airport’s south runway. They didn’t elaborate.

Flights using the other runway resumed shortly before 2 am, but the south runway remained closed on Wednesday morning, a police statement said.

Hoppe told Euronews that the work of the federal police was almost complete.

Antonov Airlines

The incident occurred near the cargo aircraft of Ukrainian cargo carrier Antonov Airlines, which, according to the Leipziger Volkszeitung newspaper, has shifted a large part of its operations to Leipzig/Halle.

The airline has based An-124 cargo aircraft in Leipzig and is building a new maintenance hangar that is due for completion in 2027.

Hostomel, the original home airport of Antonov Airlines, was destroyed by Russian attacks during the war in Ukraine.

String of incidents

The police operation at Leipzig/Halle is the latest in a string of incidents that have disrupted air travel at German airports.

In October last year, local media reported that a laser installation had been deployed near Munich airport to protect the facility from drone sightings. That came after the airport was closed for two consecutive days over suspicious drone sightings.

In November, flight operations at Berlin’s Brandenburg Airport were interrupted for around two hours due to a drone sighting in its airspace.

Incidents of unidentified drones flying in Germany’s airspace are on the rise with the country’s air navigation service DFS saying 144 drone overflights were logged last year, with 35 incidents clustered around Frankfurt Airport.

Additional sources • AP