Drone no-fly sign at Brussels airport. Image: keystone
After suspicious drone overflights the evening before, air traffic at Brussels airport initially remained irregular. A NATO military base was also affected again.
November 5, 2025, 7:35 a.mNovember 5, 2025, 8:15 a.m
Several take-offs were canceled at Brussels Airport in the morning, and some departures were delayed, as the flight schedule showed.
Air traffic at the airport in the Belgian capital had previously been stopped for a second time within a very short space of time. Shortly before 10 p.m. on Tuesday evening, all take-offs and landings were suspended for safety reasons, the Belga news agency announced.
Two hours earlier, air traffic had come to a standstill for around an hour after drone sightings. Initially, no more planes took off or landed at the airport in Liège.
“Everything is still very unclear, as even the military apparently couldn’t recognize these drones,” said the mayor. A police helicopter was requested to track the drones if necessary.
NATO military base also affected
Drones were also spotted again on Tuesday evening at the Kleine-Brogel military base in Belgium, which is used by NATO. Citizens reported six drones near the airfield, Belga reported, citing local mayor Steven Matheï. According to unconfirmed reports, the air base is one of the locations in Europe where US nuclear weapons are stored.
According to Belga, Belgium’s Defense Minister Theo Francken was a guest on a television program at the time of the sightings, which he left because of the incidents. The minister confirmed that drone sightings had been reported both in Kleine-Brogel in the Flemish part of the country and at another military base in Wallonia.
Drones were spotted over Kleine-Brogel several times last weekend. The military base in the Flemish part of Belgium was part of the annual NATO exercise to defend the alliance’s territory with nuclear weapons in October. According to unconfirmed reports, the air base is one of the locations in Europe where US nuclear weapons are stored.
Airspace violations by Russia
In recent months, unknown drones have repeatedly disrupted airport operations across Europe. In September, Copenhagen Airport was closed for four hours and Oslo Airport was closed for three hours. At the beginning of November, Berlin Airport ceased operations.
In addition, Russian drones violated NATO airspace: on the night of September 10th, around 20 drones flew into Poland, and on September 14th one drone entered Romanian airspace.
(sda/dpa)