Berlin airport briefly halts flights after drone spotted near runway

Berlin Brandenburg Airport (BER), Germany's main capital-region airport, temporarily halted flight operations on the evening of Wednesday, 23 September, after an unidentified drone was spotted close to the runway, according to the airport's press service as cited by German outlet Bild.

The airport reported that the drone was first sighted at around 20:00, and the airspace above BER was closed just twenty minutes later, at 20:20. Operations remained suspended for at least 45 minutes, during which several inbound flights had to be diverted to airports in Dresden and Leipzig.

A spokesperson for the Federal Police told Bild that multiple people at the airport had reported seeing the drone. The pilot of one aircraft diverted to Leipzig reportedly described spotting the drone on three separate occasions. A passenger from that same flight later confirmed the sightings in comments to Bild.

Part of a pattern

This is not the first security disruption at Berlin Brandenburg Airport in recent months. In early September, the airport issued a warning after an unidentified substance was detected on its premises. Before that, in November 2025, flights at BER were suspended for nearly two hours following an earlier drone sighting nearby.