Another airport in Denmark was forced to ground all flights following the sighting of several drones in the airspace.
All arriving and departing aircrafts were halted at Aalborg Airport on Wednesday night, with inbound flights diverted to other airports.
In a post on X, Nordjyllands Police said: ‘Drones have been observed near Aalborg Airport and the airspace is closed. The police are present and investigating further.’
The force said more than one drone was spotted in the airport’s airspace.
They followed a similar pattern to the drones that disrupted Copenhagen Airport on Monday, Danish National Police said.
The Danish Armed Forces was also affected as the airport is used as a military base.
The purpose of the drones, which were flying with their lights on, remain unclear and it is unknown who was controlling them, police added.
Four flights including two SAS planes, one Norwegian and one KLM flight, were affected.
Police officers previously seen at Copenhagen Airport after all flights were diverted due to drone sightings
No flights will take off or land from the airport until 6am local time on Thursday at the earliest, Aalborg Airport’s deputy and operations director, Kim Bergmann, said early on Thursday morning.
Drones were also observed near Esbjerg, Sønderborg and Skrydstrup, where Danish fighter aircraft are kept, South Jutland Police said.
It comes after Danish police this week hinted that Russia may have been behind a swarm of drones that shut down Copenhagen airport, disrupting around 100 flights and leaving 20,000 passengers stranded.
Police inspector Jens Jespersen suggested the incident had all the signs of a sophisticated operation.
He said: ‘The number, size, flight patterns, time over the airport. All this together indicates that it is a capable actor. Which capable actor, I do not know.’
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen called it ‘the most serious attack on Danish critical infrastructure to date’, adding Russian involvement could not be ruled out.
In further hints that they believe Vladimir Putin was behind the previously spotted drones, authorities said the perpetrator was seeking to demonstrate certain abilities.
In a social media post, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky referred to ‘Russia’s violation’ of NATO airspace in Copenhagen. However, he did not indicate the source of his claim.
Meanwhile, Danish intelligence previously said the country is facing a ‘high threat of sabotage’ after the incident.
‘We are facing a high threat of sabotage in Denmark. Someone may not necessarily want to attack us, but rather stress us out and see how we react,’ Flemming Drejer, Director of Operations at Denmark’s intelligence service PET, told a press conference this week.
Sharing further details, Jespersen said that the drones had appeared from several different directions, turning their lights on and off before finally disappearing after several hours.
Police are examining multiple theories about where the drones came from, including the possibility that they were launched from ships. Denmark’s main airport sits close to a busy shipping lane used by vessels entering and leaving the Baltic Sea.
On Tuesday, Russia broke its silence to deny any involvement.
Flights at Copenhagen were either diverted or grounded for hours on Monday evening after multiple large drones were seen above the runways.
At least 35 flights were ordered to other sites, including Malmo and Gothenburg, Sweden, and Billund, Aalborg, and Aarhus, Denmark.
Authorities in Denmark diverted 31 flights to other airports, causing ripple effects that delayed or cancelled around 100 flights and affected some 20,000 passengers, a spokesperson told reporters. The airport finally reopened in the early hours of Tuesday.
Later in the evening, Oslo Airport in Norway was also forced to close and divert its planes after drones were spotted in the vicinity.
Two people were also arrested in the Norwegian capital after drones were seen at a military site.
Norwegian police detained two Singaporean citizens who were operating a drone over Akershus Fortress, which houses the headquarters of the Norwegian Armed Forces and the Ministry of Defence, according to the Norwegian state broadcaster NRK.
This is a breaking news story. More to follow.
