For the second time this week Danish airports have been closed by drones occupying the airspace above them. This time it’s Aalborg Airport in northern Denmark and Billund in the central are where the drones appeared on Wednesday evening and were still there into the early morning. Local authorities considered whether to down them but decided not to because of safety concerns. Aalborg airport is served by at least 10 airlines and it sees about 1.5 million passengers a year. Drones were also seen over two other airports in the central part of the country but they weren’t closed.
Operations were halted when the drones were spotted, and at least a half-dozen flights were canceled or diverted on Wednesday evening. CNN was reporting that there were drone sightings at three other Danish airports, but it would appear that only Aalborg was disrupted. Danish authorities say they’re working on several investigative theories but no arrests have been made. Help isn’t far away. The airport is jointly used as a Royal Danish Air Force base and is home to Denmark’s Jaeger Corps special forces unit and a transport wing with four C-130Js and four CL-604 Challengers.
I warned of this exact type of interference as a possible threat to scheduling (or worse) some 24 years ago, in more than one post – 911 editorial, when I was the news editor for a now-discarded aviation online news daily.
For a few thousand dollars, a miscreant (or terrorist) could serially or simultaneously disrupt an entire continent’s air travel.
I hope that by now there’s technology to track, identify, and destroy the drones and their launchers.
We have to register our aircraft–why not require registration for drones?
We must have certain required equipment onboard for our aircraft to navigate controlled airspace (like airports)–why not for drones?
Most of us would like only minimal extra regulations for our aircraft–it is not out of line to have the same requirements for drones and drone operators.
Criminals and enemies don’t care about laws and regulations