Flights suspended at Nuremberg Airport after plane raised hijack alarm

Flights at Germany’s Nuremberg Airport have been suspended after a plane sent out an emergency code signalling it was being hijacked. The emergency response was triggered before midday on Tuesday when a civil plane from Corfu arriving at the airport sent the alert and the pilot could not be reached by radio, police revealed. It remains unclear why the plane sent out the emergency code and what happened to the pilot. Shorts Eurofighter jets were deployed to escort the aircraft, an airport spokesperson said, adding that the jets have since returned to base. Airport operations remained suspended as of 1pm on Tuesday, but police said they found there is “no danger” after investigating the ground. The plane from Corfu changed its squawk, a four-digit code assigned to an aircraft at the start of a flight to help air traffic control identify it, to “7500”, police said in a statement. The 7500 squawk signals an unlawful interference, or a hijacking case. “For safety reasons, various alarm scrambles were then triggered,” the statement read. Nurmeberg’s airport, also known as the Albrecht Dürer Airport, is one of the two main airports in the southern state of Bavaria, alongside Munich (Photo: Getty Images) The airport has been cordoned off, according to German newspaper Rheinische Post. Members of a special operations unit were on the move in the airport after the emergency. Several flights that were due to land in Nuremberg have instead been diverted to Frankfurt, Munich, Memmingen and Stuttgart. Nurmeberg Airport, also known as the Albrecht Dürer Airport, is one of the two main airports in the southern state of Bavaria, alongside Munich. It was Germany’s fifth-busiest airport in August, when the airport handled nearly 550,000 passengers, according to the Working Group of German Airports (ADV). The incident comes around two months after a drone carrying an explosive device was found at Leipzig Airport in Germany, which the German government attributed to Russia. Moscow denied responsibility. German officers dealt with an alleged Russian drone fitted with explosives at Leipzig airport last month (Photo: Jens Schlueter/Getty) The alleged attack was one of dozens of suspected Russian sabotage attacks across Europe in recent months that have raised fears of an escalation spiral. This week, two Turkish men were arrested in Germany this week over an attack on a Polish Starlink terminal that Warsaw said was carried out on behalf of Russia. Last month, Estonia accused Moscow of responsibility for an attack on a defence company used to supply military technology to Ukraine. Germany reported several attacks on its power grid and energy facilities in September that it described as sabotage. The country’s interior minister, Alexander Dobrindt, said on Monday it was facing a “shadow war” with “an objective that extends far beyond anything seen during the Cold War.”