Munich became the latest airport to be disrupted by drone sightings over its sprawling airfield, grounding flights and leaving as many as 3,000 passengers stranded at the airport overnight, according to a spokesperson for the airport.
The latest in a wave of similar incidents sweeping northern European airports started at around 10:18 pm on Thursday night when several drones were seen at Germany’s second busiest airport in the state of Bavaria, home of the country’s famous Oktoberfest.
Air traffic controllers initially restricted flight operations at Munich Airport before suspending flight movements altogether. The drone sightings grounded 17 departing flights, leaving 3,000 passengers stranded at the airport.
Passengers were forced to spend the night sleeping on camp beds set up by the airport in the terminal buildings.
A further 15 flights that were due to land in Munich were forced to divert to Frankfurt, Nuremberg, Stuttgart, and Vienna in Austria.
Munich Airport already restricts flight movements after 10 pm as part of its strict noise-abatement rules, with only a small number of scheduled flights permitted to take off and land on the Ministry of Transport’s so-called bonus list.
Flight operations normally end at midnight and resume at 5:00 am. Munich Airport resumed normal operations at 5 am on October 3 as planned, and there have been no drone sightings since.
In late September, flights at Copenhagen and Oslo airports were disrupted by a coordinated drone attack that the Danish police said had been a “capable operator” with the “capabilities, the will, and the tools to show off in this way.”
The drone sightings came just days after several European Airports fell victim to a ransomware attack on a third-party software application that runs check-in, baggage handling, and boarding processes.
Brussels Airport was the worst affected by the cyber attack on a piece of software known as MUSE and managed by Collins Aerospace, with 50% of all flights canceled at the airport for two days straight.
There was also significant disruption reported by Berlin Brandenburg and London Heathrow airports.
Could Russia be responsible for these drone attacks?
Danish officials revealed that the drone sightings at Copenhagen Airport weren’t the work of some prankster or bored teenager but, instead, carried out by a professional and well-equipped operator… The question is, who?
There is speculation that Russia could be behind the drone sightings. A relatively small way that the country can disrupt European civil infrastructure while testing the bloc’s security preparedness.
It could also be part revenge for a wave of drone attacks on Russian airports carried out by the Ukrainian army over the summer. On just one weekend in July, Russia was forced to cancel 485 flights and delay thousands more due to mass drone sightings in Russian airspace.
Fearing the drones could pose a serious threat to civil aviation, Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency activated its so-called ‘carpet plan,’ which is effectively an emergency protocol for wide-sweeping and short-notice airspace closures.
Russian airports were impacted by the carpet plan multiple times this summer, and similar drone attacks occurred in the run-up to Christmas 2024.
In the aftermath of July’s flight mayhem, President Putin sacked his transport minister, Roman Starovoit.
Less than a day later, Starovoit was found dead with a gunshot wound to his head and a pistol lying by his body in a park on the outskirts of Moscow. Authorities claimed Starovoit’s death was a suicide.
