Drone sightings disrupt flights at Copenhagen, Oslo airports

COPENHAGEN: Copenhagen Airport, the busiest in the Nordic region, reopened early on Tuesday (Sep 23) after drone sightings halted all take-offs and landings for nearly four hours, while Norway's Oslo Airport said it had shut its airspace over a drone.

"The police have launched an intensive investigation to determine what kind of drones these are," Copenhagen Police Deputy Assistant Commissioner Jakob Hansen told reporters. 

"The drones have disappeared and we have not taken any of them," he added.

Hansen said authorities in Denmark and Norway would cooperate to determine whether there was a link between the two incidents.

Oslo Airport shut its airspace from midnight local time (Tuesday, 6am, Singapore time) due to a drone observation, a spokesperson for Norwegian airport operator Avinor said in an emailed statement, adding that all flights were diverted to the nearest airport.

Danish police said on Monday that two or three large drones had been seen flying in the area.

The airport halted operations at 8.26pm on Monday, according to flight tracking service FlightRadar. Around 50 flights were diverted to alternate airports, FlightRadar said on X.

After it reopened, Copenhagen Airport said on X that delays and some cancelled departures would persist and urged passengers to check with their airlines.

The airport shutdowns came after a string of disruptions at European airports in recent days.

Last Friday, hackers targeted check-in and boarding systems provider Collins Aerospace, owned by RTX, disrupting operations at London's Heathrow - Europe's busiest airport - as well as Berlin and Brussels airports.

Over the weekend and into Monday, the fallout continued to snarl travel across the region.

In 2018, drone sightings over the runway at Gatwick near London stranded tens of thousands of passengers and disrupted hundreds of flights at the height of the holiday season.