“Isolated delays at Vilnius Airport occur due to disrupted rotations of crews and aircraft. At night, airspace over the airport was closed and this affected the schedules,” representative of Lithuanian Airports Rasa Petrauskaitė told the news agency ELTA on Friday.
According to her, delays affect arrivals and departures, including flights to and from Türkiye and Germany. On Thursday evening, several flights had to be cancelled.
For instance, Turkish Airlines flight to Istanbul, which had to take off Thursday evening, departed at 1 p.m. Friday instead. Mavi Gok Airlines flight to Antalya had to depart at 3 p.m. Friday but was delayed until 4 p.m. A Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt was also late to depart.
As reported, Vilnius Airport had to close at 8:05 p.m. Thursday due to contraband-laden meteo balloons from Belarus. Its airspace was reopened at 10:43 p.m.
Last week, Vilnius Airport had to close four times, while Kaunas Airport suspended flights once.
Responding to the Belarusian hybrid attack, the Lithuanian Government on 29 October announced that two remaining border checkpoints with Belarus would be closed for a month, until 30 November. Šalčininkai border checkpoint is completely closed, whereas there are some exemptions for travellers at Medininkai checkpoint.