Lost man triggers shutdown at Hamburg airport

Federal police in Hamburg say they initiated a partial lockdown of the city’s airport on Friday out of an abundance of caution when a man erroneously opened the facility’s escape routes and entered a restricted security area around 9:45 a.m. local time (0745 GMT).

Police say it was unclear what the man’s intentions were when he hit the button that opened escape routes, allowing him to wander into the restricted area.

The incident caused a major evacuation of both the security area and planes.

An airport spokesperson later confirmed that “the precautionary measure taken by federal police has ended and passengers are now passing through security again,” adding that “flight operations are resuming.”

Nevertheless, the spokesperson noted that significant delays and flight cancellations would continue throughout the course of the day.

Guten Tag from the DW newsroom in Bonn where we begin our coverage of the day’s news with travelers in Hamburg being forced to deal with evacuation, flight cancellations and massive delays after a passenger erroneously opened escape routes by hitting an emergency button and entering a restricted security area.

Police say flights have now resumed but added delays will continue throughout the day.

In the northern state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, State Environmental Minister Till Backhaus presented a postmortem report on a humpback whale that provided weeks of headlines after it became stranded in German waters in March.

Backhaus said the creature drifted for days before scientists lost the signal transmitted from a tracking device attached to its tail fin. The cause of the whale’s death remains unclear.

Inflation numbers declined slightly in Germany according to statistics, though economic recovery remains anemic. The dip is reportedly due to the introduction of fuel rebates designed to ease pressure on consumers still struggling with global oil shortages caused, among other things, by the war that the US and Israeli launched against Iran on May 1 and the subsequent ongoing closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a major oil transit route.