DLR investigates drone incidents at German airports

No more: planes are being rerouted, flights are being cancelled, queues at the terminals. If an unmanned aerial vehicle is sighted near an airfield, flight operations may be interrupted in the worst-case scenario. The German Aerospace Center (DLR) has investigated the impact of such drone flights at German airports.

For the study, the Federal Aviation Office (LBA) provided the DLR with data on the incidents last year. According to this, 118 incidents were reported to the LBA. Among them were nine in which flight operations were interrupted, the DLR announced. The economic damage for these nine cases amounted to around half a million euros.

On average, the full closures lasted 32 minutes. However, after a drone sighting, flight operations were interrupted for more than an hour. Due to the tight scheduling of flights, this led to a large number of delays and corresponding follow-on effects in the route network. In 56 cases, there were minor disruptions. This included, for example, the closure of individual runways, which in turn could lead to a change in the direction of operation.

Economic damage for airlines

The victims of the incidents were the airlines, which suffered economic damage due to the closures. In two cases, aircraft had to land at an alternate airport after several holding patterns over the destination airport.

These operational disruptions caused additional costs, for example, due to increased fuel consumption from longer flight times, additional landing fees, and expenses for passenger catering according to EU regulations. Finally, personnel and aircraft were exposed to higher loads. There were no flight cancellations due to the drone incidents. Therefore, the airports also recorded no demonstrable economic damage.

“Even though the economic impact of the cases documented in Germany in 2024 remained limited overall, the DLR analyses show that even comparatively short operational restrictions can lead to extensive follow-on effects in air traffic, additional operational expenses, and economic risks due to the highly interconnected air transport system,” said Florian Linke, acting director of the DLR Institute of Air Transport. “This applies particularly to closures lasting about an hour or more, as the buffer capacities of the air transport system are exhausted in such cases, which can lead to a sharp increase in costs.”

Drones cause airport closures

At the beginning of October in Munich, numerous flights were cancelled after a drone sighting, affecting 3,000 passengers. In Denmark and Norway, there were several drone incidents in September, some of which led to airport closures. The most significant incident occurred in December 2018, when London-Gatwick Airport remained closed for 33 hours. The damage amounted to approximately 100 million euros.

However, the drone incidents not only caused economic damage, said DLR CEO Anke Kaysser-Pyzalla. “Furthermore, security issues remain a central challenge that requires additional investment.”

One conclusion the DLR draws from the study is the need to document drone sightings at airports more precisely. Currently, they are recorded “in German airspace with inconsistent data quality.” More precise documentation would allow operational consequences, economic impacts, and risks to be identified at an early stage. “Based on this, suitable measures can be derived,” said Kaysser-Pyzalla.

(wpl)