The airport of the Lithuanian capital again stopped work because of the appearance of a balloon, the press service of the airport said on 20 November.
As noted on the airport’s Facebook page, the restrictions were introduced at 18:38 on 20 November.
“According to preliminary information, the decision to restrict the airspace was caused by the flight of a balloon (or balloons) in the direction of Vilnius airport,” – stated in the message.
According to information on the Vilnius Airport website, at 18:27 the aircraft arriving from Dubai was able to land. The landing of planes flying from Riga (Latvia) and Stockholm (Sweden) was delayed. At 20:13 (21:13 Minsk time), a plane from Amsterdam (Netherlands) landed.
On 20 November, Lithuania reopened border crossing points with Belarus, which had been closed at the end of October due to several incidents with smuggled balloons that posed a danger to civil aviation.
Lithuania has closed its border with Belarus since 27 October and initially said it planned to keep it closed until at least early December. The day before, Vilnius airport halted operations for the fourth time in a week due to the presence of balloons in the airspace.
The ban was introduced in response to dozens of weather balloons with smuggled cigarettes, which flew from Belarus: sometimes their number exceeded several dozen at a time. Lithuania had to close Vilnius airport (it is located 25 kilometres from the border with Belarus) several times because of the meteoprobes.
In response, Lukashenka signed a decree on 31 October, which banned the movement of trucks, tractors and trailers registered in Poland and Lithuania, as well as cars registered in Poland, through the territory of Belarus.
All these trucks (there were over a thousand of them) were simply prevented from leaving the country by the Belarusian authorities from that moment on and sent “under guard” to car parks near the border.