Drone sighting halts flights at Bremen airport in Germany

Flights at Bremen airport in Germany were temporarily suspended after a drone was spotted near the airport this evening, police said, as quoted by DPA.

The drone was spotted at around 7:30 p.m. local time (8:30 p.m. Eastern time), prompting an immediate halt to flights, a police spokesman said. Air traffic resumed about an hour later, he added.

It was initially unclear who was controlling the drone.

According to local news site "Outside and Inside" (buten und binnen), a flight from London had to be diverted to Hamburg due to the disruption, and a flight to London was unable to take off on time.

The incident comes after flights at Berlin's international airport were suspended for around two hours on Friday after a drone was spotted. The number of incidents involving drones of unknown origin is increasing in Germany and abroad.

Operations at Germany's second-largest airport in Munich were suspended in early October due to drone sightings.

Drones are banned within a 1.5-kilometre radius of German airports to prevent disruption to flights. Spotting them can lead to partial or complete suspension of operations, and illegal flights near airports are treated as dangerous interference with civil aviation and can be severely punished. Drones recently caused the temporary closure of several Danish airports, DPA recalls.