Frankfurt Airport reopened after evacuation
August 7, 2018
German police said they evacuated part of a terminal at Frankfurt Airport on Tuesday and stopped boarding due to "at least one unauthorized person in the security zone." Federal police gave the go-ahead for operations to resume about three hours after the initial security alert.
A family from France was being questioned after at least one of four family members entered the secure area without having completed security checks, according to a police spokeswoman cited by Germany's DPA news agency.
Cancellations
Fraport, the company that operates Frankfurt Airport, said that 49 out of Tuesday's 1,500 scheduled flights were canceled because of the security measures.
As aviation analyst Alex Macheras told DW, "Frankfurt airport is among the world’s busiest international airports and ... passengers can expect disruption to continue throughout the rest of the day and night — with a significant backlog tomorrow."
Polish basketball player Przemek Karnowski said on Twitter that he had been "stuck at the Frankfurt airport for last few hours [now]."
Unverified video footage posted on social media during the police operation appeared to show passengers being evacuated from a terminal.
The evacutation came one week after Frankfurt Airport was cleared of passengers after a security breach. On July 31, airport officials said a person had entered a secure area of the airport without undergoing a security check. Police added that last week's evacuation of the terminal was a precaution and there was no threat of a bomb or any other concrete danger.
Three days earlier on July 28, German police cleared one of the terminals at Munich Airport — Germany's second-biggest after Frankfurt — after a woman slipped past a security checkpoint. The breach caused hundreds of flights to be canceled. It wasn't until seven hours after the closing that flights began to take off.
kw/rt (AP, Reuters, dpa)