New brief interruption of traffic at Brussels airport after a drone flight

The flights were stopped for around thirty minutes on Thursday evening, announced an air traffic control spokeswoman.

Two days after a first incident, air traffic was briefly interrupted on Thursday, November 6, at Brussels-Zaventem international airport, due to the presence of a drone nearby, an air traffic control spokesperson said. Traffic was interrupted for thirty minutes between 9:23 p.m. and 9:53 p.m., before operations resumed normally, said this spokesperson for Skeyes, the air traffic manager in Belgium.

Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever urgently convened a national security council on Thursday morning after these unidentified drone overflights in Belgium following Tuesday’s incident. Shortly before the interruption on Thursday evening, Germany announced that it would come to the aid of Belgium to counter drone overflights. “At the request of Belgium (…) the Bundeswehr (the German army) will support our neighboring country in the short term by providing it with capabilities to combat small unmanned aerial systems.”the German Defense Ministry said in a statement.

Like several European countries over the past two months, Belgium and Germany have experienced episodes of drones deemed suspicious over sensitive places or infrastructure.