(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 Copenhagen airport was shut over drone sightings that raised European security concerns. A string of drone sightings and digital outages has repeatedly disrupted airports since 2017. These episodes bypass […]
World
Factbox-Drones and cyber outages exposing aviation weak spots since 2017
Audio By Carbonatix
(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 Copenhagen airport was shut over drone sightings that raised European security concerns.
A string of drone sightings and digital outages has repeatedly disrupted airports since 2017. These episodes bypass core flight‑safety systems and instead hit choke points such as check‑in and boarding systems, power infrastructure and airfield perimeters, causing ripple effects across networks.
May 27, 2017: IT FAILURE AT BRITISH AIRWAYS’ LONDON HUBS
British Airways cancelled all flights from Heathrow, Europe’s busiest airport, and Gatwick on the first day of a holiday weekend after a data-centre power issue, affecting 75,000 passengers.
A power surge on the morning of Saturday, May 27 hit BA’s flight, baggage and communication systems. It was so strong it also rendered the back-up systems ineffective, with knock-on delays lasting into the following Monday as systems were restored.
December 19, 2018: REPEATED DRONE SIGHTINGS AT LONDON GATWICK
Persistent drone reports crippled London’s Gatwick Airport for three days during peak travel in the run up to Christmas. Roughly 140,000 passengers and about 1,000 flights were affected in the biggest disruption since an Icelandic volcanic ash cloud in 2010.
The British army was drafted in to Gatwick to deploy “specialist equipment” as the anti-drone capability needed was not yet commercially available.
The length of disruption at an airport the size of Gatwick was unprecedented. Dubai airport was shut a number of times in 2016 due to unauthorised drone activity, but the longest period was for under two hours.
January 11, 2023: SAFETY SYSTEM FAILURE CAUSES NATIONWIDE HALT IN U.S.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ordered a nationwide ground stop lasting about 90 minutes that disrupted more than 11,000 U.S. flights, following a “Notice to Air Mission” (NOTAM) system failure.
This FAA system is meant to alert pilots to a range of hazards, including snow, volcanic ash or birds near an airport. It also provides information on closed runways and temporary air restrictions.
August 28, 2023: NATS FLIGHT DATA GLITCH IN UK
UK air traffic control limited flows after a flight‑plan processing fault, forcing manual input. Around 1,500 flights were cancelled and disruptions spilled into the following day.
July 19, 2024: FAULTY CROWDSTRIKE UPDATE CAUSES GLOBAL WINDOWS OUTAGE
A faulty security software update by global cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike triggered widespread Windows crashes, which affected numerous industries and grounded more than 5,000 flights worldwide.
Across the United States, Asia and Europe, carriers such as Delta Air Lines, Ryanair, United Airlines and Air India said they had faced delays or disruption
U.S. cancellations topped 2,200 on day one, with nearly 7,000 delayed, and some airlines took days to fully recover operations.
March 21, 2025: SUBSTATION FIRE SHUTS LONDON HEATHROW
Britain’s Heathrow Airport, the world’s fifth-busiest, was shut for 18 hours after a huge fire at a nearby electrical substation knocked out its power, stranding over 200,000 people and costing airlines millions of pounds
The airport had been due to handle 1,351 flights on the Friday, flying up to 291,000 passengers, but planes were diverted to other airports in Britain and across Europe.
September 10, 2025: DRONE INCURSION INTO POLAND SHUTS SEVERAL AIRPORTS
Several Polish airports were temporarily closed when around 21 suspected Russian drones entered Polish airspace.
Warsaw Chopin and Modlin airports, as well as Rzeszow and Lublin airports in the country’s east, temporarily closed before resuming operations.
September 20, 2025: CYBER ATTACK AFFECTS MULTIPLE EUROPEAN HUBS
A cyberattack targeting check-in and boarding systems provider Collins Aerospace, owned by RTX, disrupted operations at several major European airports including London’s Heathrow, Berlin Airport and in Brussels.
Brussels Airport canceled 25 flights on Saturday, 50 on Sunday and half of Monday’s flight departures due to persistent problems.
September 22, 2025: DRONE INCURSIONS IN DENMARK AND NORWAY
Two to three large drones repeatedly flew over Copenhagen’s airspace, prompting a nearly four‑hour airport shutdown, diversions and delays, leaving tens of thousands of passengers stranded.
Authorities in Norway also shut the airspace at Oslo airport for three hours after a drone was seen.
Denmark said 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.
September 24, 2025: DENMARK CLOSES ANOTHER AIRPORT DUE TO DRONES
Drones were first sighted near Denmark’s Aalborg airport at about 9:44 p.m. (1944 GMT) on Wednesday, police said.
The drones followed a similar pattern to the ones that had halted flights at Copenhagen airport two days earlier, police said.
The closure of Aalborg airport also affected Denmark’s armed forces because it is used as a military base, police added.
(Reporting by Dimitri Rhodes; Editing by Matt Scuffham, Jamie Freed and Michael Perry)