Flights cancelled at Munich airport after drone chaos

Munich airport was pressured to shut down briefly in a single day after drone sightings.

Dozens of flights had been cancelled or diverted as the airport was closed for more than two hours, delaying 3,000 passengers.

The disruptions comply with a wave of drone incidents affecting European aviation, shutting down airports in Denmark and Norway last week, and heightening security considerations across the continent.

It is still unclear where the drones have come from, but European officers imagine Russia is behind them. Moscow has rejected these claims.

In Belgium, also in the early hours of Friday, 15 drones had been noticed flying over a army training ground in Elsenborn, used by the EU and Nato.

Authorities said the unmanned plane had been noticed by probability as they examined a new drone detection system at the bottom. The drones then flew across the border into Germany shortly after being noticed.

The defence ministry is investigating the incident, and the origin of the drones stay unknown.

Operations at Munich airport resumed on Friday morning, but delays had been anticipated to continue.

The airport said in a assertion: “When a drone is sighted, the safety of travellers is the top priority.” It added that stranded passengers got help.

Credit: Courtesy Flightradar24.com via GWN

Bild, a German tabloid, reported that the drones seen over Munich airport had a wingspan of around one metre.

They had been first noticed by residents over Erding, a city roughly 10km north-east of Munich as the crow flies, and about 2km from Munich airport.

Police had been despatched immediately with “drone defence equipment” to intercept the UAVs, but had been unable to discover them, Bild said, citing German security sources.

The initial sightings in Erding indicate that the drones might have been launched by land from a location north-east of Munich and then flew to the airport unseen over rural areas.

Responding to studies of the Belgian drone sightings, Daniel Franzen, the mayor of Butenbach, a Belgian municipality in the realm, said he wasn’t alerted to any risk posed by drones.

But he told the Belga news company that he was conscious of a drone being despatched up over the area to look for a lacking horse.

Western leaders have warned the unexplained drone flights are half of Moscow’s growing hybrid conflict against Nato and its allies.

It comes as Germany is investigating Russia’s involvement in a swarm of drones that was spying on a energy plant, hospital and army shipyard in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein. A fuel refinery and a regional parliament had been also focused in the incident last week.

An inside authorities memo, printed by German media, claimed that the crucial infrastructure was being measured by the drones’ operators.

Drone incursions are notably disruptive at German airports owing to a strict ban on night-time flights, which is designed to forestall noise disturbances for neighbours.

It means that if a large quantity of flights are delayed considerably during the night, passengers will not be in a position to journey until the next morning when the flight ban ends.

Europe is on high alert following Russian drone incursions into Poland and Romania and the violation of Estonia’s airspace by Moscow’s fighter jets last month.

In September, 14 European airports closed or briefly suspended operations because of drone incursions, the very best depend in a single month.

Last week, Copenhagen and Oslo airports, the busiest in the Nordic area, had been briefly closed after low-flying drones violated their restricted airspaces.

Mette Frederiksen, the prime minister of Denmark, described the incident at the capital’s airport as “the most serious attack on Danish critical infrastructure to date”.

Two days later, unidentified drones flew over a number of airports across the nation, including two used by the army.

Officials referred to it as a “hybrid attack” but had been cautious not to level the finger straight at Russia. Ms Frederiksen has recommended Moscow was concerned.

Denmark banned all civilian drone flights following the incident and hosted a summit of European leaders in Copenhagen during which they pledged to back defence plans against Russian drones.

Vladimir Putin joked on Thursday that he wouldn’t fly drones over Denmark anymore, despite Moscow denying duty for the incidents.

Credit: GWN

Investigators are attempting to decide whether or not a ship belonging to Russia’s “shadow fleet” might be accountable for launching the drone flights over European airports and other infrastructure.

The Boracay, an 18-year-old tanker, left Russia on Sept 20 and sailed through the Baltic, skirting around northern Denmark and Germany before reaching the west coast of France.

A Telegraph analysis of monitoring data places the ship in the neighborhood of the unexplained drone incursions, and on the same dates.

Earlier this week, it was boarded by French troopers and two of its crew members had been arrested on suspicion of finishing up what Emmanuel Macron called “serious offences”.

The Benin-flagged vessel has been blacklisted by the European Union as half of Russia’s ageing shadow fleet of oil tankers, which delivers tens of billions of euros to Moscow and funds up to 40 per cent of its conflict effort.

The tanker resumed its journey in direction of the Suez Canal, data from maritime web sites Marine Traffic and Vesselfinder confirmed on Friday morning. Its Chinese captain was back onboard, a source told AFP.