A bear roaming a runway at a Japanese airport forced staff to cancel flights and declare itself off-limits to passengers for the day.
The black bear reappeared on Thursday at northern Japan's Yamagata Airport, after an initial disruption that caused flight delays and the closure of its runway.
Staff used a car to chase it away and closed the runway again, with the bear still roaming the vicinity.
"Given the situation there is no way we can host plane arrivals now," Yamagata Airport official Akira Nagai told AFP, adding the second closure led to 12 flight cancellations.
Hunters have set up traps to capture the bear and police officers are surrounding the airport to prevent it from escaping. "We're in a stalemate now", Nagai said.
Human encounters with bears have reached record levels in Japan. In the year to April 2024, there were a record 219 bear attacks in the country - six of them fatal, according to official data.
Climate change affecting food sources and hibernation times, along with depopulation linked to an ageing society, are causing bears to venture into towns more frequently, scientists say.