Drones disrupt flights at second Danish airport in a week

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By Louise Rasmussen

COPENHAGEN (Reuters) -Denmark’s Aalborg airport, used for commercial and military flights, was closed due to drones in its airspace, police said early on Thursday, two days after the country’s main Copenhagen airport was shut over drone sightings that raised European security concerns.

Danish national police said the drones followed a similar pattern to the ones that had halted flights at Copenhagen airport for four hours a few days earlier. Local police later said the drones had left the Aalborg area after about three hours.

Denmark said on Tuesday the incident at Copenhagen airport was the most serious attack yet on its critical infrastructure and linked it to a series of suspected Russian drone incursions and other disruptions across Europe.

The closure of Aalborg airport also affected Denmark’s armed forces because it is used as a military base, police added. The Danish armed forces said they were assisting local and national police with the investigation, but declined to comment further.

Authorities in Norway also shut the airspace at Oslo airport for three hours on Monday evening after a drone was seen.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Tuesday that the drones that halted flights at Copenhagen airport were part of a “pattern of persistent contestation at our borders.”

Suspicions of Russian involvement in the Copenhagen airport incident were ungrounded, Russia’s ambassador to Denmark said on Tuesday.

Norwegian and Danish authorities are in close contact over the Copenhagen and Oslo incidents on Monday but their investigation has not yet established a connection, Norway’s foreign minister said on Wednesday.

MORE THAN ONE DRONE

Northern Jutland police told reporters “more than one drone” had been sighted near Aalborg airport and they were flying with lights on.

The drones were first seen at about 9:44 p.m. (1944 GMT) on Wednesday, according to police, and remained in the airspace until 12:54 a.m. on Thursday.

Eurocontrol, which oversees European air traffic control, had earlier said arrivals and departures at Aalborg airport would be at a “zero rate” until 0400 GMT on Thursday due to drone activity in the vicinity.

The first flight from Aalborg on Thursday is scheduled at 0420 GMT, the airport’s website showed.

Northern Jutland police said they could not specify the type of drones or whether they were the same as the ones flying over Copenhagen airport on Monday.

“It is too early to say what the goal of the drones is and who is the actor behind,” a police official said.

Northern Jutland police later said that efforts to take down the drones had been unsuccessful and the drone operators had yet to be apprehended.

Southern Jutland police said in a post on X that drones had also been observed near the airports in the Danish towns of Esbjerg, Sonderborg and Skrydstrup.

Fighter Wing Skrydstrup in Southern Jutland is the base for Denmark’s F-16 and F-35 fighter jets.

National police commissioner Thorkild Fogde said many people around the country had reported drone sightings to the police since Monday.

“Of course many of these reports do not cover activities that are of interest to the police or the military, but some of them do, and I think the one in Aalborg does,” he said.

Police said they were investigating further on site and cooperating with the national intelligence service and the armed forces, as well as authorities in other countries.

There is no danger to passengers at Aalborg airport or residents in the area, police said.

They added that three flights had been diverted to other airports.

(Reporting by Louise Rasmussen in Copenhagen; additional reporting by Surbhi Misra, Ananya Palyekar and Shivani Tanna in Bengaluru; Editing by Jamie Freed)