Airspace over Vilnius Airport was initially closed from 9:56 p.m. to 10:55 p.m. on Thursday due to the Belarusian hybrid attack, stated Lithuanian Airports, the company managing the country\u2019s three main airports.<\/p>\n
“On Friday, at 12:24 a.m., due to the hybrid attack carried out by Belarus against Lithuania, civil aviation, and the public \u2013 with navigation traces characteristic of balloons being detected \u2013 temporary airspace restrictions were introduced over Vilnius Airport,” stated Lithuanian Airports.<\/p>\n
Although arrivals were promptly suspended, yet departures were allowed maintaining all safety requirements. Vilnius Airport resumed operations at 12:50 a.m. once airspace restrictions were lifted.<\/p>\n
One flight with 182 passengers on board had to be diverted to Kaunas and all passengers were transported to Vilnius by buses.<\/p>\n
As reported, Vilnius Airport had to suspend operations numerous times last October, November and December due to contraband balloons smuggling cigarettes from Belarus to Lithuania.<\/p>\n
At the end of 2025, the Government declared a nationwide emergency due to continuing airspace violations by smuggler balloons.<\/p>\n
Lithuania addressed the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) over recurring contraband balloon incursions from Belarus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Airspace over Vilnius Airport was initially closed from 9:56 p.m. to 10:55 p.m. on Thursday due to the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":50067,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[93],"tags":[21466,171,170,2743],"class_list":["post-50066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-vilnius","tag-belarus-en","tag-lithuania","tag-vilnius","tag-vilnius-airport"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/116301823089645527","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50066","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=50066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50066\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}