MILAN — Orio al Serio airport in the northern Italian city of Bergamo suspended flights on Tuesday due to a runway incident.

Local media reported that it was caused by someone running onto the tarmac and getting sucked into an airport engine.

The Volotea flight headed to Asturias in Spain was performing a manoeuvre before taking off.

The Bergamo Milan airport authority, known as SACBO, closed the Bergamo-Orio al Serio airport at 10.20 local time.

All flights were suspended “due to a problem that occurred on the taxiway.”

These included Ryanair services to Crotone, Prague, Zadar, Tirana, Kos, Malta, Naples, Porto, Alghero, and a Eurowings flight to Dusseldorf.

Air traffic resumed at 12pm, but there are still some delays.

These include Ryanair services to Fez, Lisbon, Copenhagen, Bristol and Cagliari, an AJet flight to Istanbul and an AirArabia flight to Casablanca.

Corriere della Sera newspaper, citing unnamed airport officials, said the 35-year-old man had abandoned his car outside the terminal and run through the arrivals area on the ground floor.

He accessed the runway via a security door and ran towards the Volotea plane as it was pushing back in preparation for takeoff.

Ansa, an Italian news agency, confirmed the victim was neither a passenger nor an airport employee. It added that the man is thought to have taken his own life.

There was no immediate response to calls placed to the authority’s headquarters. — Euronews