Drone Sightings Ground Flights at Munich International Airport for 7 Hours

Flights at Germany’s Munich International Airport (MUC) were grounded overnight Thursday into Friday for about seven hours because of a string of drone sightings around the hub.

According to the airport, 17 of its departing flights were grounded starting at about 10 p.m. local time, impacting nearly 3,000 of its passengers. The airport set up camp beds for those impacted passengers, and blankets, drinks, and snacks were provided, it said.

Along with the 17 grounded departures, another 15 arrivals were diverted to other German airports including Stuttgart, Nuremberg, Vienna, and Frankfurt. Many of the flights were from Lufthansa, which was forced to cancel, among others, three long-haul flights to Asia.

The airport said that flight operations have been running normally again since operations resumed at 5:00 a.m., but the impact still appeared to bleed into Friday. According to FlightAware, 15% of Friday departures at Munich were delayed, as were another 13% of arrivals.

There are a lot of questions surrounding where the drones came from—the German newspaper Bild, citing sources close to the incident, said that there were multiple drones reported over the airport, and that one in particular was larger than usual. The sighting came the same week that Munich was forced to close Oktoberfest because of a bomb threat.

“When a drone is sighted, the safety of travelers is the top priority. Reporting chains between air traffic control, the airport, and police authorities have been established for years. It is important to emphasize that the detection and defense against drones are sovereign tasks and are the responsibility of the federal and state police,” Munich Airport said on Friday morning.

The incident is far from the first time that drones were sighted in German airspace. According to another German publication, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 144 sightings have been reported so far in 2025, 113 in 2024, and 99 in 2023. Some, including the prime minister of Bavaria, the German state that includes Munich, are calling for police to shoot down drones going forward.