The major airport has been forced to close after drones were spotted on Monday evening as police were called out to the incident
An international airport has been forced to close after drones were spotted in the vicinity, causing major disruption on Monday evening.
Up to three UAVS were reportedly detected in the airspace over Copenhagen Airport in Denmark as police have swarmed the area. “We have a massive presence out there”, Henrik Stormer, the head of the Copenhagen Police, told reporters.
The airport closed to take-offs and arrivals at around 8.30pm local time, according to Naviair – the company repsonsible for traffic control at the airport. A post by FlightRadar on X (formerly Twitter said as of 22:05 local time (20:05 UTC), more than 35 flights bound for Copenhagen Airport had been diverted to other airports due to the drone situation.
While a post on X from the local police read: “[The airport] is currently closed for take-off and landing, as 2-3 large drones have been seen flying in the area. The time horizon is currently unknown.”
Most of the diverted flights head to Malmö, Billund, Aarhus and Gothenburg. No information has yet been released on the possible origin of the drones.
A spokesperson for Copenhagen Airport confirmed that the airspace over the airport had been closed due to unidentified drones. They told Reuters: “Police are investigating the matter and we currently have to timeline for reopening.”
The news comes after a passenger jet came so close to colliding with a drone in May that the object “filled” the plane’s windscreen. The Airbus A320 had just taken off from London’s Heathrow Airport and was at 9,000 ft during the near miss.
A report into the incident revealed: “Both the Captain and First Officer saw a bright white object pass overhead from the opposite direction. The object appeared to be approximately 2-3m in size at the very least, it may have been larger as it filled a good proportion of the windshield. There was no appreciable separation vertical or horizontal,” according to the documents logged to report the incident.