Copenhagen airport closure due to reported drone activity

Another video. We may need a new thread for Aalborg.


Source: https://x.com/MSchieller69609/status/1970987048938131854


This video was filmed of this viewpoint looking almost exactly west.
Screenshot 2025-09-24 at 7.38.44 PM.png


There are no aircraft on ADSBX at 21:55UTC Sep 24 (23:55 local) which have flight paths matching this video. 21:55UTC is after the first reports and the airport closed, so this could be police/military aircraft which arrived on scene to investigate.

FR24 on X says the last in or out from Aalborg airport was 19:19UTC. But reports of drones there began much earlier.


Source: https://x.com/flightradar24/status/1970973669686952031
 
And, pardon for being a tad spammy but: I have come to realize that the vast majority of people are just awful at spatial awareness and thinking a bit "outside the box". People tend to go for the closest solution to everything, which doesn't involve having to think about distances and angles and sound propagation and so on and ao forth.

So a lot of the times a super loud and rather hefty airliner at 40k feet can become a mysteriously silent smallish UFO or "drone" at 100 feet, in the dark, and they go for the 2nd option. Because they don't think much further than what is normally required in everyday life.

Same with bug UFOs etc, but in reverse (small insect zipping across a screen becomes a huge craft flying at physically impossible velocities in the distance). It's as if people are generally unaware of stuff that flies or is otherwise in the skies and can't comprehend what they'd look like in various situations. Like adding 1 and 1.

Okay, end rant.
There's also a selection-for-the-strange going on here -- the people who see a plane at 40k feet or a fly a few feet from the camera and who correctly identify them don't file reports! Nor do folks who see the plane at 40k and think it is only about 1-2k up... many folks who see a plane and radically misjudge how far away it is or how big it is can still recognize it as a plane and not find it all that exciting. ONLY the people that see something that THEY interpret as unusual wind up in our debunk-this data set(s).

The overwhelming majority of people may well see a plane and say "Oh a plane," and go on with their lives. But as we look at reports, it can look to us like everybody is seeing drones!
 
View attachment 84389

This video was filmed of this viewpoint looking almost exactly west.
View attachment 84388

There are no aircraft on ADSBX at 21:55UTC Sep 24 (23:55 local) which have flight paths matching this video. 21:55UTC is after the first reports and the airport closed, so this could be police/military aircraft which arrived on scene to investigate.

FR24 on X says the last in or out from Aalborg airport was 19:19UTC. But reports of drones there began much earlier.


Source: https://x.com/flightradar24/status/1970973669686952031


There were reports on Bluesky that Danish armed forces were flying around in helicopters to track and target drones. Seems like they would have to be flying around in the same airspace...
 
There were reports on Bluesky that Danish armed forces were flying around in helicopters to track and target drones. Seems like they would have to be flying around in the same airspace...
Yes I saw similar posts from "OSINT" accounts but not citing anything official.
Alleged Aalborg drone video scraped from: https://nyheder.tv2.dk/live/krimi/2...rg?entry=0910a895-8477-48e4-ae86-fb25e66936e2

Time on post says 18:22, time on video caption says 18:04. Assumed localtime, UTC+2. Hard to know if 18:04 is the actual time the video was recorded.
View attachment 84390
Translated by google:
External Quote:
New videos of drones over Aalborg

Drones at Aalborg Airport's parking lot

Several viewers have sent video and pictures of drone activity in and around the area at Aalborg Airport. It is not known whether these are the unwanted drones or whether it is government-controlled drones. We have verified this video using Google Maps.
Likely enough context visible in order to geolocate.

View attachment 84385

This video was filmed from 57.086216, 9.875981 looking approximately NE towards the runways.

And if it was filmed at 18:04 local 16:04 UTC there was a small plane (EVEKTRO EV-97 EuroStar) flying in a location and in a direction that looks similar to the video.

EDIT: This doesn't really make sense though because I don't think it would be dark outside. It's possible the website is converting the times to my local time, EDT. So this clip could be someone filming a police helicopter that arrived to investigate.
 

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View attachment 84389

There are no aircraft on ADSBX at 21:55UTC Sep 24 (23:55 local) which have flight paths matching this video. 21:55UTC is after the first reports and the airport closed, so this could be police/military aircraft which arrived on scene to investigate.
Do keep in mind though the police said they had helicopters up and I had someone check the ADS-B and there was nothing showing so it suggests in Denmark the police don't broadcast, unless someone knows otherwise.
 
Translated by Deepl:
External Quote:
At a press conference at the police headquarters in Aalborg, North Jutland Police have just confirmed that drones are still flying over Aalborg.
Chief Inspector Jesper Bøjgaard from North Jutland Police explains:
"At 9:44 p.m., drones were observed over the airport. At present, there are still drones over Aalborg.
We cannot elaborate on what kind of drones they are, but they have lights on. We do not know what they are doing or where they come from," he explains.
Will take down the drones
He goes on to explain that the police are present in large numbers and are trying to take down the drones and also chase down the drone operators.
"If it is safe to do so, it will be possible to take down the drones," he said at the press conference.
It is reported that the Danish Armed Forces have helicopters in the air to chase the drones with specially trained soldiers.
However, the North Jutland Police would not confirm this.
He does confirm, however, that there are helicopters in the air.
Four planes that were supposed to land at Aalborg Airport have landed elsewhere.
It is not yet known how much of an impact this will have on morning traffic at Aalborg Airport, which has several departures.
The chief police inspector cannot say whether these are the same drones that triggered a major drone alert at Copenhagen Airport on Monday.
The Danish Armed Forces subsequently stated that the drones were operated by a skilled operator. Here in Aalborg, they do not wish to go into detail about the drones.
https://migogaalborg.dk/politiet-melder-ud-jagter-droner-over-aalborg-lige-nu/
(edited to replace google translation with deepl translation, which appears to be better)

Time cited is 19:44UTC, and the North Jutland police confirmed there are helicopters in the air investigating. Though no helicopters show on ADSBX for that time, adding weight to the idea that Danish police/military are flying aircraft with position broadcasting turned off. Which makes it harder for others to correlate any videos to their law enforcement aircraft.
 
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From this Reuters article it sounds like drones were *first* reportedly seen over Aalborg airport at 9:44pm local time (19:44UTC).

No details about *who* reported it.

It is also odd that drones were supposedly seen over the course of more than 3 hours, and police are there, and yet the police cannot provide any tangible evidence for an illegal drone presence.

External Quote:

MORE THAN ONE DRONE
Northern Jutland police told reporters "more than one drone" had been sighted near Aalborg airport and they were flying with lights on.
The drones were first seen at about 9:44 p.m. (1944 GMT) on Wednesday, according to police, and remained in the airspace until 12:54 a.m. on Thursday.
Eurocontrol, which oversees European air traffic control, had earlier said arrivals and departures at Aalborg airport would be at a "zero rate" until 0400 GMT on Thursday due to drone activity in the vicinity.
The first flight from Aalborg on Thursday is scheduled at 0420 GMT, the airport's website showed.
Northern Jutland police said they could not specify the type of drones or whether they were the same as the ones flying over Copenhagen airport on Monday.
"It is too early to say what the goal of the drones is and who is the actor behind," a police official said.
Northern Jutland police later said that efforts to take down the drones had been unsuccessful and the drone operators had yet to be apprehended.
Southern Jutland police said in a post on X that drones had also been observed near the airports in the Danish towns of Esbjerg, Sonderborg and Skrydstrup.
Fighter Wing Skrydstrup in Southern Jutland is the base for Denmark's F-16 and F-35 fighter jets.
National police commissioner Thorkild Fogde said many people around the country had reported drone sightings to the police since Monday.
"Of course many of these reports do not cover activities that are of interest to the police or the military, but some of them do, and I think the one in Aalborg does," he said.
https://www.reuters.com/business/ae...irport-closed-due-drones-airspace-2025-09-24/
 
A Danish Air Force Bombardier Challenger was flying a 13k ft altitude holding pattern over Aalborg, doing loops for approximately 50 minutes from 19:55UTC to 20:45UTC on Sept 24.

Screenshot 2025-09-25 at 06.44.42.png
 
Source: https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/indland/droner-set-over-koebenhavns-lufthavn?focusId=10235649

Translated with deepl:
External Quote:
Extra vigilance in Copenhagen last night
The Copenhagen Police were on high alert last night after drones were spotted over a number of airports in Jutland.

This was reported by Dyre Sønnicksen, duty officer at the capital's police department, this morning.

He also said that they continue to receive many reports from citizens who believe they have seen drone-like objects in the sky.
And
External Quote:
Aalborg Airport: 'These drones are of a different size'
Our colleagues in Aalborg spoke with Kim Bermann, who is the operations director at Aalborg Airport.

He says that last night's events differ from previous encounters with drones.

'This is more serious, and we are much more alert given the situation we have had at Copenhagen Airport.

How do you feel that this situation is more serious?

'The drones are of a different size; we can see that they are so large that you can actually see them.
It remains unclear if any ATC staff have seen drones. Every report of a drone sighting that has happened in Norway and Denmark in the last 3 days seems to originate with other members of the public, not the people whose actual job it is to monitor controlled airspace.
 

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Alleged drone video from https://ekstrabladet.dk/nyheder/samfund/article10956056.ece

Posted 01:35am Denmark local time (UTC+2). The only into given about when the video itself is recorded is "late Wednesday evening". And prior to 1:35am local time.
Screenshot 2025-09-25 at 07.05.07.png

External Quote:
New drone at Aalborg Airport
Late Wednesday evening, Ekstra Bladet photographer René Schütze filmed a drone in the airspace above Aalborg Airport.
To me the video looks like it could be an airplane flying away from the camera. A high focal length camera the media crew may be carrying could also potentially zoom in quite far to a distant/high cruising altitude plane, and many planes continued to fly normal flight paths over Aalborg airspace during this.

 
And, pardon for being a tad spammy but: I have come to realize that the vast majority of people are just awful at spatial awareness and thinking a bit "outside the box". People tend to go for the closest solution to everything, which doesn't involve having to think about distances and angles and sound propagation and so on and ao forth.

So a lot of the times a super loud and rather hefty airliner at 40k feet can become a mysteriously silent smallish UFO or "drone" at 100 feet, in the dark, and they go for the 2nd option. Because they don't think much further than what is normally required in everyday life.

Same with bug UFOs etc, but in reverse (small insect zipping across a screen becomes a huge craft flying at physically impossible velocities in the distance). It's as if people are generally unaware of stuff that flies or is otherwise in the skies and can't comprehend what they'd look like in various situations. Like adding 1 and 1.

Okay, end rant.
One thing to add... entertainment value. A good story. Attention. That's a lot of motivation. The story grows and so does the size of the fish that got away.

Re: size and distance estimates in drone cases. I want to show off a bit. This is an early example of evidence that witnesses were primed to perceive distant planes as small and close...

See: https://www.metabunk.org/threads/drone-photo-over-colorado-actually-a-boeing-737.11055/#post-235834

That thread was split from: https://www.metabunk.org/threads/my...er-colorado-and-nebraska-chasing-venus.11048/

The Great Colorado Mystery Drone Flap of 2019 - 2020 may have been the first mystery drone flap.

The Gatwick Mystery Drone Panic was earlier, but it only lasted 36 hours.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-46670714
The suggestion there may not have been any drones at Gatwick Airport was a "miscommunication by police", a government source has told the BBC.

During a conference call between ministers, chaired by Transport Secretary Chris Grayling, it was agreed the 67 drone sightings were legitimate.

But over the weekend, a senior police officer said it was a "possibility" there had never been a drone.

About 1,000 flights were affected during the airport's 36 hours of chaos.

The airport has spent £5m since Wednesday on new equipment and technology to prevent copycat attacks.

Sussex Police has insisted it was not "back to square one" after releasing an arrested man, 47, and woman, 54, without charge on Sunday.

A government source said the force accepted that there had been "poor communications".

Det Ch Supt Jason Tingley had cast doubt over possible drone sightings as police had not been able to acquire any footage.

Asked about this, he said: "We are working with human beings saying they have seen something."

He later clarified the force was "actively investigating" 67 reports of sightings and there were some "persons of interest" but would not reveal if officers were close to making any further arrests.
Funny that the voice of reason - Tingley - was framed, by the "government source," as a source of misinformation.
 
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I'm working on some improvements to Sitrec that might be useful here. Landing lights on planes, and better support for multiple objects (you can right-click on an object now to edit it - very buggy though). Still a work in progress.

https://www.metabunk.org/sitrec/?cu...m/1/Copenhagen Drones 2025/20250925_080209.js
2025-09-25_01-07-23.jpg


Here, it would be helpful to have a rough set of GE polygons for the buildings. I've also got to get the lights on more planes (and add some smaller planes). Give me a few days.
 
Here, it would be helpful to have a rough set of GE polygons for the buildings. I've also got to get the lights on more planes (and add some smaller planes). Give me a few days.
People in the Cities Skylines community sometime model structures like this..


Source: https://old.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkylines/comments/70npa3/welcome_to_copenhagen_airport/


I know a few people in that community I might be able to ask around... to se if there is a usable model for Sitrec what format would be best?
 
Alleged drone video from https://ekstrabladet.dk/nyheder/samfund/article10956056.ece


To me the video looks like it could be an airplane flying away from the camera. A high focal length camera the media crew may be carrying could also potentially zoom in quite far to a distant/high cruising altitude plane, and many planes continued to fly normal flight paths over Aalborg airspace during this.
The symmetry of the lights suggests a plane flying on a path almost aligned with the observer.

Icelandair flight 217 passed directly over Aalborg at 2112UTC (11.12pm local time), heading northwest. This was an A319.

But there were plenty of others that could fit the bill depending exactly where in Aalborg it was filmed from. Eg SK2988 which passed just to the north at 2131 (an ATR 72 at just 16,000ft), SK1878 just to the south at 2146, AZG262 slightly to the east at 2241…

On closer inspection if the plane is flying away from the camera it looks as if the video was filmed from slightly to the left of the flight path. So SK2988 and AZG262 are the best candidates. I'd suggest looking at SK2988 as it was a smaller turboprop plane at relatively low altitude which might appear more "out of the ordinary" then a high altitude jet.
 
This video was filmed from 57.086216, 9.875981 looking approximately NE towards the runways.

And if it was filmed at 18:04 local 16:04 UTC there was a small plane (EVEKTRO EV-97 EuroStar) flying in a location and in a direction that looks similar to the video.

EDIT: This doesn't really make sense though because I don't think it would be dark outside. It's possible the website is converting the times to my local time, EDT. So this clip could be someone filming a police helicopter that arrived to investigate.

When I open the link the website momentarily gives the time as "Kl. 00:22" before jumping to "I går kl. 23.22" (Yesterday 23:22). So it looks like it adjusts to the viewer's time zone - I am on UTC+1, one hour behind Danish time. Which means the timestamp is 22:22UTC, and the video caption timestamp is 22:04UTC.


Overlaying three frames to get a flight path:

1758793332097.png


It seems a close match to flights heading south just off the west coast but neither of these seems to match the angle quite right:

1758793403264.png


That's NSZ3RF (5523) at the top and RK1393 at the bottom - although both passed by at similar times so you would also expect to see both in shot.
 
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I know a few people in that community I might be able to ask around... to se if there is a usable model for Sitrec what format would be best?
I can't actually import 3D models like that yet (just .GLB files indented to be used as planes), but if it's in a format Google Earth can use, then I can probably make it work.

But I was actually suggesting doing a quick model directly in Google Earth with polygons, which I can import.
 
I'm working on some improvements to Sitrec that might be useful here. Landing lights on planes, and better support for multiple objects (you can right-click on an object now to edit it - very buggy though). Still a work in progress.

https://www.metabunk.org/sitrec/?custom=https://sitrec.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/1/Copenhagen Drones 2025/20250925_080209.jsView attachment 84401

Here, it would be helpful to have a rough set of GE polygons for the buildings. I've also got to get the lights on more planes (and add some smaller planes). Give me a few days.
Cool!
A future thing could be a rough sketch of the real size of the plane, maybe just the lights on the wings in the right distance. (Edit: Oh you actually almost wrote that)
....and a way to keyframe the camera movement would be super cool ;)
 
Here is a Danish sighting from last night with a time and location, that very much looks like a plane:

https://www.tvmidtvest.dk/ringkoebi...utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=ReadAlsoImage

External Quote:


Udgivet i dag kl. 10:21


Cathrine Pedersen fra No ved Ringkøbing var en af de mange midt- og vestjyder, der onsdag aften så en mistænkelig drone i luften over landsdelen.

Og hun er overbevist om, at der ikke bare var tale om en almindelig hobbydrone.

- Jeg er ikke et sekund i tvivl. Den var meget stor, fastslår hun.


Omkring klokken 20.45 kørte hun sammen med sin kæreste på Ringkøbingvej øst for Videbæk, da de bemærkede et lys på den mørke aftenhimmel.

- Jeg er tidligere stewardesse og sagde med det samme til min kæreste: "Det der er ikke et fly", siger hun.

Parret steg ud af bilen og så dronen hænge over dem i et par minutter, inden den forsvandt mod syd. Cathrine Pedersen vurderer, at dronen mindst var et par meter bred, og hun fortæller, at man tydeligt kunne se, at den var udstyret med fire lys.

Det lykkedes Cathrine Pedersen at lave en kort video af dronen med sin mobiltelefon, og da hun og kæresten få minutter senere var kommet hjem, så de en af forsvarets helikoptere, der fløj over ejendommen fra nord mod syd.

- Det kunne tyde på, at der også var andre, der var opmærksomme på dronen, siger hun.

Men dermed er historien ikke slut.

Da Cathrine Pedersen senere på natten - omkring klokken kvart i fire - kortvarigt var oppe og kiggede op mod himlen, så hun to droner, der fløj fra syd mod nord.

Igen lykkedes det hende at forevige synet med sin telefon, men denne gang var det på noget længere afstand.

- Jeg synes, at det kommer tæt på med alle de observationer i det jyske, og det er en lille smule skræmmende, siger hun.

Translation (bolding added)

Published today at 10:21

Cathrine Pedersen from No near Ringkøbing was one of the many people in central and western Jutland who saw a suspicious drone in the air over the region on Wednesday evening.

And she is convinced that it was not just an ordinary hobby drone.

- I don't doubt it for a second. It was very large, she states.

At around 8:45 p.m., she and her boyfriend were driving on Ringkøbingvej east of Videbæk when they noticed a light in the dark evening sky.

- I am a former flight attendant and immediately said to my boyfriend: "That's not a plane," she says.

The couple got out of the car and saw the drone hanging above them for a few minutes before it disappeared to the south. Cathrine Pedersen estimates that the drone was at least a couple of meters wide, and she says that you could clearly see that it was equipped with four lights.

Cathrine Pedersen managed to make a short video of the drone with her mobile phone, and when she and her boyfriend returned home a few minutes later, they saw one of the Danish military helicopters flying over the property from north to south.

- This could indicate that there were also others who were aware of the drone, she says.

But that's not the end of the story.

When Cathrine Pedersen was up briefly later that night - around a quarter to three - and looked up at the sky, she saw two drones flying from south to north.

Again, she managed to immortalize the sight with her phone, but this time it was from a somewhat longer distance.

- I think it comes close with all the observations in Jutland, and it's a little scary, she says.
Screenshot from video: object is flying right to left, the small white dot is a star.

1758807084082.png


At 20:45 (18:45 UTC) on Wednesday this plane was heading low, roughly southwards, over exactly this area.

1758806996120.jpeg


The later sighting is less easy to identify. It says "two drones" but the video only shows one distant spot of light. Possibly this Turkish 787 which passed about 70-80 miles to the southwest?

1758807634985.jpeg
 
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One thing to add... entertainment value. A good story. Attention. That's a lot of motivation. The story grows and so does the size of the fish that got away.
And in this case, of course, war nerves. What with a hot war going on in which drones are being prominently used and incursions into other nations' air spaces are being reported, it would seem expected that some folks will be watching things in the sky with a bit more concern than usual.

Edit: fixed a confusing bit of punctuation.
 
And in this case, of course, war nerves. What with a hot war going on in which drones are being prominently used and incursions into other nations' air spaces are being reported. It would seem expected that some folks will be watching things in the sky with a bit more concern than usual.
There was similar tensions of course last year and the NJ flap had some origins in the UK joint airbase flaps
 
And in this case, of course, war nerves. What with a hot war going on in which drones are being prominently used and incursions into other nations' air spaces are being reported, it would seem expected that some folks will be watching things in the sky with a bit more concern than usual.

Edit: fixed a confusing bit of punctuation.
I expect that to get worse over time as the distinctions between a drone, a cruise missile, and an airplane are going to blur into a pretty smooth continuum as all these technologies are converging on each other.
 
4 more airports involved in the drone flap according to https://www.avisen.dk/politi-droner-er-observeret-ved-lufthavne-i-sydjyll_811255.aspx

External Quote:
Luftrummet over Billund Lufthavn var tidligt torsdag morgen lukket i omkring en times tid.

Det skete, efter at Sydøstjyllands Politi klokken 04.21 fik en anmeldelse om mulig ulovlig droneaktivitet.

- Vi underrettede Billund Lufthavn, som kortvarigt valgte at lukke luftrummet.

- Vi er fortsat til stede og er i gang med at efterforske, men vi har endnu ikke kunnet påvise, at der har været ulovlig droneaktivitet, lyder det fra kommunikationsafdelingen hos Sydøstjyllands Politi.
~ Drone reports closed airspace over Billund airport for about an hour on thursday morning, but the police couldn't confirm illegal activity.

External Quote:
Natten til torsdag lød det fra Syd- og Sønderjyllands Politi i en pressemeddelelse, at politiet var til stede nær lufthavnene i Esbjerg, Sønderborg og Skrydstrup efter observationer af droner.

Politiet har siden verificeret droneaktiviteten.
...
Lufthavnene har ikke været lukket i forbindelse med droneflyvningerne.
~ The police confirmed drone activity the night before at Esbjerg, Sønderborg, and Skrydstrup airports, but airspace wasn't closed.

EDIT: Skrydstrup airbase hosts NATO F-16 and F-35s.
 
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I expect that to get worse over time as the distinctions between a drone, a cruise missile, and an airplane are going to blur into a pretty smooth continuum as all these technologies are converging on each other.
It's going to be a challenge to airports. I don't know if just ignoring civilian reports is a good answer, but closing the airport every time people see a distant plane and think it is a drone is not a good answer either...
 
Yesterday evening someone flew a small consumer drone improperly in the Oslo area and was identified by police. This is the second case this week of an operator of a small consumer-grade drone being identified and addressed quickly by police in the Oslo area.
External Quote:
I går kl. 21:28
Nyhetssenter Stor-Oslo
Drone ved Oslo lufthavn – politiet oppretter sak
En drone ble flydd innenfor grensen til flyforbudssonen ved Oslo lufthavn Gardermoen onsdag kveld.
Romerikes Blad omtalte saken først.
– Det opprettes sak og blir tatt beslag i dronen, sier operasjonsleder Gisle Sveen til avisa.
Flyforbudssonen er på 5 kilometer radius.
– Det er ikke noe her som tyder på at det er noe annet enn en dronepilot som har misforstått reglene, sier operasjonsleder Sveen til NRK.
Politiet beskriver dronen som en «hyllevare med begrensede egenskaper».
Mannen i 50-åra blir uansett anmeldt for ulovlig droneflygning.
– Den har ikke forstyrret flytrafikken, men så lenge den er innenfor en forbudssone så vil det alltid bli reagert på.
Etter flere ulovlige droneflyginger på Østlandet denne uka, sier operasjonslederen følgende:
– Vi oppfordrer til og forventer at alle setter seg godt inn i regelverket som gjelder.
Source: https://www.nrk.no/stor-oslo/drone-ved-oslo-lufthavn-_-politiet-oppretter-sak-1.17585014

(translated by deepl)
External Quote:

Yesterday at 9:28 p.m.
Greater Oslo News Center
Drone at Oslo Airport – police open case
A drone was flown within the boundaries of the no-fly zone at Oslo Airport Gardermoen on Wednesday evening.
Romerikes Blad was the first to report on the incident.
"A case is being opened and the drone will be confiscated," operations manager Gisle Sveen told the newspaper.
The no-fly zone has a radius of 5 kilometers.
"There is nothing here to suggest that this is anything other than a drone pilot who has misunderstood the rules," operations manager Sveen told NRK.
The police describe the drone as a "off-the-shelf product with limited capabilities."
The man in his 50s will nevertheless be reported for illegal drone flying.
"It did not disrupt air traffic, but as long as it is within a restricted zone, there will always be a response.
After several illegal drone flights in Eastern Norway this week, the operations manager said the following:
"We urge and expect everyone to familiarize themselves with the applicable regulations.
Relevant law enforcement agencies seem decently good at identifying improperly flown aircraft and tracking them down, which further raises questions about claims that large illegal aircraft are being flown for hours over highly monitored airspace despite no concrete confirmation of their presence by ATC/police. In other instances, police receive a report from someone that there was a drone spotted, but the investigation yields no results, and it seems not enough weight is being given to the possibility that the initial report was a false positive. And when this happens, it gets reported by the media and politicians as if the drone was definitely there but was just so advanced or skillfully operated that it evaded the investigators.

These weak foundations don't stop the escalatory language and presumptions of more serious airspace violations by large aircraft for extended periods of time that cannot be identified, or tracked down, or even confirmed to have an unlawful presence, continuing to plow on ahead from members of the media and political officials.
External Quote:
Aalborg airport, used for commercial and military flights in the north of the country, was temporarily closed when drones were seen in its air space between 22:00 and 02:00 local time.

Smaller airports in southern Denmark also reported drone activity, but were not closed.

This morning, Danish authorities categorised it as a "hybrid attack" that came from a "professional actor". The drones were launched locally, they said, but they did not directly blame Russia - or anyone else.

The National Police has raised the crisis level and the country's defence minister said the government was considering bringing an Article 4 discussion to Nato over the matter - Estonia and Poland have already done so over similar incidents this month. As our security correspondent Frank Gardner writes, the drone disruptions are part of an "escalating and worrying" pattern.
Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cy4dv3w1p0et#player

In an ironic twist, Ross Coulthart is hard at work again amplifying unfounded stories of anomalous aircraft, but his belief that these objects are anomalous super-human UFOs has him calling for public figures to stop using irresponsible escalatory language around the objects being hostile Russian or Iranian or Chinese drones.


Source: https://x.com/UFOrklarligt/status/1971191069091168730

Screenshot 2025-09-25 at 11.37.16 AM.png


Coulthart retweeted this video which is 100% an identifiable plane.
Screenshot 2025-09-25 at 11.28.14 AM.png


So much so that the user posted an follow-up that he'd confirmed it to have been a specific plane. This is the one referred to by @ThomasH in #141
Screenshot 2025-09-25 at 11.31.39 AM.png
 
That's NSZ3RF (5523) at the top and RK1393 at the bottom - although both passed by at similar times so you would also expect to see both in shot.
I resorted to switching my computer's system timezone to UTC+2 so it'd all be consistent at least. NSZ3RF seems like a possibility, but is pretty far away. RK1393 RUK66KE(?) is significantly farther away and the ambient light pollution here could make it much dimmer.

I actually think SAS2988 is a closer match, and would have been filmed about 30 minutes before the media outlet posted that. KML with all 3 flights is attached. The darker blue path here.

Screenshot 2025-09-25 at 18.26.59.png


View attachment 84389

This video was filmed of this viewpoint looking almost exactly west.
View attachment 84388

There are no aircraft on ADSBX at 21:55UTC Sep 24 (23:55 local) which have flight paths matching this video. 21:55UTC is after the first reports and the airport closed, so this could be police/military aircraft which arrived on scene to investigate.

CNN has picked up ^this video posted by an X user:
https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/24/europe/denmark-aalborg-airport-closed-drones-latam-intl
 

Attachments

I actually think SAS2988 is a closer match, and would have been filmed about 30 minutes before the media outlet posted that. KML with all 3 flights is attached. The darker blue path here.

Screenshot 2025-09-25 at 18.26.59.png
None of them seem to have the right angle IMHO. The path is nearly horizontal, with only a slight angle downwards. The SAS flight would have appeared to descend at quite a rate.

1758818127985.png


Compare the path on the video:

1758818256619.png
 
Some rational words of wisdom from the Head of air operations at the Danish Defence Academy:

https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/indland/droner-set-over-koebenhavns-lufthavn?focusId=10236345

Chef for luftoperationer på Forsvarsakademiet: 'Risiko for, at det ikke er droner'
Og så kommer der lige en længere smøre her.

For når vi taler droner, lysglimt og objekter på himlen - især om natten - er der mange forbehold, der skal tages.

Selvom myndighederne har bekræftet, at uidentificerede, lysende droner har fløjet over danske lufthavne flere gange siden mandag aften, er der stadig en risiko for, at det i virkeligheden har været noget helt andet.

Det siger Karsten Marrup, der er major og chef for center for luft- og rumoperationer på Forsvarsakademiet.

- Der er en risiko for, at det, der er blevet set, ikke nødvendigvis er droner, fordi det er meget svært at afstandsbedømme på en nattehimmel, siger han til DR.

- Planeten Venus er ganske ofte blevet rapporteret som et flyvende objekt, der har stået stille over for eksempel naboens sommerhus. Det siger alt om, hvor svært det er at afstandsbedømme i mørke.

Karsten Marrup understreger, at han ikke har adgang til de samme oplysninger og data om natteaktiviteten, som politiet har, og at han heller ikke er inde over politiets arbejde i den konkrete sag.

Han ved derfor ikke, hvad politiet baserer deres betragtninger på og kan derfor også "umuligt konkludere", at det ikke er netop droner, der har fløjet på himlen flere steder.

Men så længe observationerne bygger på øjenvidneberetninger, som flere politikredse får dusinvis af i øjeblikket, er det potentielt utroværdigt.

- Hvis det havde været for 15-20-år siden, og nogle sagde, de så en ufo, ville man spørge, hvilke beviser og data der understøttede observationen, siger han.

- Lige nu virker det, som om det er troværdigt, hvis nogen siger, de har set noget flyve, og det er en drone. Fordi en drone er noget, vi kan forholde os til.

English:

External Quote:

Head of air operations at the Defence Academy: 'Risk that it is not drones'
And then a longer passage follows.

When we talk about drones, flashes of light and objects in the sky — especially at night — many caveats must be considered.

Although the authorities have confirmed that unidentified, glowing drones have flown over Danish airports several times since Monday evening, there is still a risk that it was actually something completely different.

Says Karsten Marrup, who is a major and head of the Centre for Air and Space Operations at the Defence Academy.

"There is a risk that what has been seen is not necessarily drones, because it is very difficult to judge distance in a night sky," he tells DR.

"The planet Venus has quite often been reported as a flying object that appeared stationary above, for example, a neighbour's summer house. That says everything about how hard it is to judge distance in the dark."

Karsten Marrup stresses that he does not have access to the same information and data about the night activity as the police do, and that he is not involved in the police work on the specific case.

He therefore does not know what the police base their considerations on and so he "cannot possibly conclude" that it was not drones that flew in the sky in several places.

But as long as the observations are based on eyewitness reports, which several police districts are currently receiving dozens of, they are potentially unreliable.

"If this had been 15–20 years ago and someone said they saw a UFO, you would ask what evidence and data supported the observation," he says.

"Right now it seems to be considered credible if someone says they saw something flying and that it is a drone. Because a drone is something we can relate to."
 
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TV2 has published an article stating the alleged drone sightings near airports in Copenhagen, Aalborg, Skrydstrup, Esbjerg, and Sønderborg are based entirely on visual reports. By contrast, the article reports that Hans Christian Andersen Airport (ODE/EKOD), a small regional airport near Odense, has not received any reports of drone sightings. The article details the deployment of drone-tracking radar technology at HCA Airport, which is involved in a project by the Danish military to study and develop the use of drone technology for military purposes (announced on March 28th 2025). According to TV2, the radar system is supplied by Danish radar company Weibel Scientific A/S. Citing the CEO of HCA Airport, Hans Okholm Vejrup, TV2 adds that the system can detect drones within a range of 2–40 km, depending on the size of the drone. https://nyheder.tv2.dk/business/202...eknologien-der-kan-se-droner-paa-lang-afstand

Weibel Scientific's website offers brochures of both tracking and anti-UAS radars:
 
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None of them seem to have the right angle IMHO. The path is nearly horizontal, with only a slight angle downwards. The SAS flight would have appeared to descend at quite a rate.
May be right.

callsign SAS2870 (reg: SE-RST) and callsign VLG8539 (reg: EC-MER) made similar passes as SAS2988 (SE-MKO) and NSZ3RF (LN-NGD), about half an hour later, with the closest matching time window being maybe ~22:05-22:10. The SE-RST path from this viewpoint is even steeper than SE-MKO. But the EC-MER path is slightly closer to the viewer than the LN-NGD one.

Screenshot 2025-09-25 at 19.04.51.png


Problem is the EC-MER path doesn't really look that viable until 22:07UTC at the earliest but the video caption has a time of 22:04UTC in it. May be putting too much trust in that time. It doesn't explicitly say it was filmed at 22:04UTC. And the post itself is timestamped 22:22UTC.

Screenshot 2025-09-25 at 19.14.25.png
 
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TV2 has published an article stating the alleged drone sightings near airports in Copenhagen, Aalborg, Skrydstrup, Esbjerg, and Sønderborg are based entirely on visual reports. By contrast, the article reports that Hans Christian Andersen Airport (ODE/EKOD), a small regional airport near Odense, has not received any reports of drone sightings. The article details the deployment of drone-tracking radar technology at HCA Airport, which is involved in a project by the Danish military to study and develop the use of drone technology for military purposes (announced on March 28th 2025). According to TV2, the radar system is supplied by Danish radar company Weibel Scientific A/S. Citing the CEO of HCA Airport, Hans Okholm Vejrup, TV2 adds that the system can detect drones within a range of 2–40 km, depending on the size of the drone. https://nyheder.tv2.dk/business/202...eknologien-der-kan-se-droner-paa-lang-afstand
ChatGPT 5 text translation of: https://nyheder.tv2.dk/business/202...eknologien-der-kan-se-droner-paa-lang-afstand

(it's long so I didn't embed it all, also ignore formatting, it's a simple copypaste and may inherit some markdown stuff)
https://chatgpt.com/share/68d57ac1-8230-8005-87ac-f33d3d0c2628
 
UFO-Sweden's veteran investigator Clas Svahn urges caution:
https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/skane/ufo-sverige-avfardar-observationer-ingen-dronarinvasion

He mentions the usual, obvious caveats, but notably also chimes in that "drones" seem to be the new trend in UFO/UAP reports. Where there were Martians or Zeta-Reticulians before, there are Russians, Iranians or Chinese now. For basically identical "objects", in terms of characteristics as described by the observers.

BTW, he and his organization are hated by a large chunk of UFO-afficionados here. They're in on the great conspiracy etc. You can guess why.
 
Problem is the EC-MER path doesn't really look that viable until 22:07UTC at the earliest but the video caption has a time of 22:04UTC in it. May be putting too much trust in that time. It doesn't explicitly say it was filmed at 22:04UTC. And the post itself is timestamped 22:22UTC.

View attachment 84432
I haven't been able to find one that is a perfect match. Even that one should appear to rise slightly as it heads left rather than sinking slightly.
 
Could be military or police flight, re above. I don't live far from Denmark and every once in a while (couple of times a week) there are helicopters and planes here that don't show up on public ADS-B-trackers. No idea why they fly "transponder-less" on occasion though, as the same types of A/C indeed do transmit at other times (yeah, I've positively ID:d several of the "quiet" ones). Won't speculate.
 
https://www.newsweek.com/russia-drones-denmark-russia-vessel-nato-10781347

"Danish authorities have reported the sighting of a Russian warship on the edge of Danish waters with its tracking system turned off, indicating it is likely trying to avoid detection, according to Danish outlet Ekstra Bladet.

A helicopter spotted the Russian vessel, identified as the landing vessel Aleksandr Shabalin, off the coast of Langeland, Denmark.

The vessel has been sailing along Danish waters while Denmark also has suffered what officials have labelled a "hybrid attack" of drones flying through the country's airspace and disrupting the operations of critical infrastructure, prompting Denmark to invoke NATO Article 4."
 
Some rational words of wisdom from the Head of air operations at the Danish Defence Academy:
Yup, don't ignore it, and don't hype it - find a sensible balance.

External Quote:
Af Forsvaret
Droner er observeret ved flere militære installationer - blandt andet ved Flyvestation Skrydstrup og Jydske Dragonregiments kaserne i Holstebro. ...

Forsvaret kan nedtage droner over militære installationer under hensyn til den konkrete trusselsvurdering samt mulige følgevirkninger af nedtagningen.
-- https://www.forsvaret.dk/da/nyheder/2025/VedrorendedronehaendelseroverDanmark/

Theoretically there's an official English translation on the page, but it doesn't work in my browser, so here's a stab:
"From the [Danish] defence forces
Drones have been observed over several military installations, including Skrydstrup Air Base and the Jydske Dragon Regiment barracks in Holstebro. ...

The Danish defence force may shoot down drones flying over military installations, taking into account the specific threat assessment and the possible consequences of shooting them down."

Again, pretty sane.
 
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