A British man has been arrested after reportedly stealing a car and driving it on to the runway of Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport while drunk.
The unnamed passenger was on the Dutch airport’s runway ‘for a few minutes’, police said.
The Briton pushed an emergency exit button at a gate before stealing a contractor’s car parked on the tarmac.
Police spokesman Dennis Muller told the AFP news agency the incident had taken place in the early hours of Christmas Day.
‘He drove around for a few minutes but at no point was there any danger to flight traffic. There aren’t many flights on Christmas Eve and there were none at all at the time he took the car,’ he said.
Mr Muller added: ‘We’re investigating exactly where he went in the car. We don’t know why he took the car, these are things you do when you’re drunk.’
He admitted it would ‘take a while [for the man] to get sober’.
‘We’ll interview him about what he’s done and then it’s up to the prosecutor to decide what to do with him,’ he said.
Amsterdam’s Schiphol is the fourth-largest airport in Europe with between 120,000 and 140,000 passengers every day.
