The military command of the largest air force manoeuvre in NATO history expects only a minor impact on civilian air traffic over Germany.
"It will be in the range of minutes at the most," German Air Force Inspector Ingo Gerhartz said at a press conference in Berlin on Wednesday.
Germany is leading the 10-day manoeuvre Air Defender 23, which is set to begin on June 12. Twenty-five countries - most of them NATO members - are participating with 250 aircraft and almost 10,000 soldiers. About 2,000 flights are planned.
The director of the US National Guard, Michael Loh, also said he expects only minimal disruption to civilian air traffic.
However, Germany's air traffic controllers' union GdF has made a different forecast. "The military exercise Air Defender will of course have a massive impact on the flow of civil aviation," its chairman Matthias Maas previously told dpa.
He referred to a scenario calculated by the European air traffic control organization Eurocontrol, which shows up to 50,000 delay minutes per manoeuvre day.
