Nuremberg airport reopens after suspected mid-air emergency

Nuremberg Airport in southern Germany briefly closed on Tuesday after a passenger jet's cockpit transmitted a hijack alert code, prompting police to seal off the site and scramble two Eurofighter jets, before officers declared there was no danger once the aircraft landed safely.

The aircraft, a Corendon Airlines flight from the Greek island of Corfu, sent the code "7500," which signals a hijacking, after air traffic controllers lost radio contact with the pilot, a police spokesman for Mittelfranken said on social media. Eurofighters from the air force's Tactical Air Wing 74, based in Neuburg an der Donau, escorted the plane through German airspace, according to Germany's air traffic control authority. Two Eurofighters from that unit stand ready around the clock as an alert flight, the authority said.

The plane landed safely at around 12:10 local time, and police confirmed shortly afterwards that the passengers and pilots were unharmed. A police spokesman said a cockpit radio malfunction may have triggered the alert; the cause remained under investigation, and investigators had not given further details by Tuesday afternoon. Passengers were allowed off the plane after about an hour and taken to the arrivals hall by bus, where an emergency team looked after them.

The airport reopened at around 13:30, an airport spokesman said. Six flights were delayed, two arrivals and four departures, and two inbound planes were diverted to Cologne and Prague before continuing on to Nuremberg later.

Earlier that morning, between 02:00 and 04:00, three pilots had separately reported sighting an object that might have been a drone during takeoff or landing, Bavarian border police said. Police sent a helicopter to search for the object, in coordination with the airport and air traffic control, but it was not found; that search caused shorter delays to flights before Tuesday's hijack-code incident.