Unauthorised Drone Grounds Flights at Dubai Airport

Flights were grounded at Dubai International Airport this morning, after an unauthorised drone was spotted in the surrounding area.

Both arriving flights, and departing flights, were halted because of the drone activity.

The busy airport closed the airspace just after 8am this morning, local time (4am GMT).

Arriving flights resumed at 8:35am, and all other operations were restarted by 9:07am.

Dubai Airports posted a series of tweets, explaining the incident: “Airspace around DXB was closed from 0808 to 0835 this morning due to unauthorised drone activity resulting in a number of flight delays.

“Arrivals resumed at 0835 & departures at 0840 with full operations resuming at 0907. We are working to minimise inconvenience

“Safety is our top priority and we remind all UAV operators that activities are not permitted within 5km of any airport landing area.”

Unauthorised drone activity has previously caused delays at the airport, which is one of the biggest in the world.

The airport was also closed for a total of 69 minutes on 12th June, due to a similar incident.

Published 01 Oct 2016

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