{"id":23700,"date":"2026-02-25T01:05:57","date_gmt":"2026-02-25T01:05:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/23700\/"},"modified":"2026-02-25T01:05:57","modified_gmt":"2026-02-25T01:05:57","slug":"60-balloons-forced-11-hour-shutdown-at-vilnius-airport-air-navigation-head","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/23700\/","title":{"rendered":"60 balloons forced 11-hour shutdown at Vilnius Airport \u2013 air navigation head"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Saulius Batavi\u010dius, head of Oro Navigacija, told LRT Radio on Monday that around 60 balloons had been released on Sunday, with about 40 entering zones critical to aircraft operations.<\/p>\n<p>Batavi\u010dius said the balloons appeared to be launched at calculated intervals to keep them hovering in sensitive areas and prevent air traffic from resuming. Several of them &#8220;practically blocked the way to Vilnius Airport,&#8221; he said, calling the incident &#8220;a systematic attack on civil aviation.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Lithuanian Airports (LTOU) said the airspace restrictions were lifted at 5:00 a.m. on 1 December and that regular operations had resumed. More than 7,400 passengers and 50 flights were affected, including 31 cancellations, 10 diversions and nine delays.<\/p>\n<p>LTOU warned that some knock-on delays could occur on Monday due to disrupted crew and aircraft rotations. Passengers whose travel plans were impacted were urged to contact their airlines for further information.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Saulius Batavi\u010dius, head of Oro Navigacija, told LRT Radio on Monday that around 60 balloons had been released&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23701,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[93],"tags":[1410,171,3190,170,2743],"class_list":{"0":"post-23700","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-vilnius","8":"tag-belarus","9":"tag-lithuania","10":"tag-smuggling","11":"tag-vilnius","12":"tag-vilnius-airport"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23700"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23700\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}