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Explosive drone near Leipzig/Halle hits cargo plane, officials say
German police defused an explosive drone found by a Ukrainian Antonov cargo aircraft, and a later object damaged another freighter that aborted landing when the airport shut down.
German police defused an explosive drone rigged to cause damage after it was found near a Ukrainian Antonov cargo aircraft at Leipzig/Halle Airport overnight Tuesday, prompting the country’s interior minister to warn it represented a “new quality of danger” for European aviation, according to Insurance Business. After the airport shut down, an unidentified separate object struck a different cargo plane when that aircraft aborted its landing. German state officials said the plane suffered minor damage and diverted safely to Hannover, about 125 miles away, and authorities have not said whether the two events were linked. Investigators later said the device was armed with Semtex and PETN explosives, a detail Insurance Business cites from dpa reporting carried by Yahoo News that has not been independently confirmed by AP or Reuters. The north runway reopened after about two hours, while the south runway underwent scheduled maintenance, and Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said there was no danger to passengers or airport employees. Separately, prosecutors handling politically motivated and extremist crime opened an investigation, though no suspects were named. Insurance Business also notes that Leipzig/Halle is Antonov Airlines’ main base outside Ukraine and that the incident raises classification and liability questions that can affect how aviation hull and war-risk exposures are handled across specialty insurance and reinsurance markets.