December 26, 2012
THE HAGUE (AFP) - A drunken British man was arrested Tuesday after driving a stolen car on an Amsterdam airport runway "for a few minutes", police said.
The unnamed passenger headed home for Christmas had pushed an emergency exit button at one of Schiphol airport's gates, stumbled onto the tarmac and stole a car belonging to an airport contractor, police spokesman Dennis Muller told AFP.
"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.
"We're investigating exactly where he went in the car," Muller said after the incident which happened between 1:00 and 2:00 am (0000 and 0100 GMT) on Tuesday.
Police said they did not yet know exactly where the passenger was headed, but it was in Britain.
"We don't know why he took the car, these are things you do when you're drunk," Muller said, adding that the man would "take a while 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 hub Schiphol is Europe's fourth-largest airport with between 120,000 and 140,000 passengers passing through daily.
