Dublin Airport (DUB), Ireland’s busiest airport, reported on Thursday afternoon that they have been forced to suspend all flight operations due to the presence of drone activity.
This was confirmed via a post on their official Twitter account at 18:34 local time, in which they did not provide further details, only mentioning that they will publish further updates later.
Between arrivals and departures, around 80 flights are scheduled for the remainder of Thursday in Dublin. At the time of this publication (18:46 GMT) FlightRadar24 shows two flights, one Ryanair and one Iberia, waiting for clearance to enter the runway and take off.
A passenger in the Ryanair flight posted a photo from aboard de airplane:
Aaand im stuck, on the taxiway, was JUST about to take off too pic.twitter.com/ow4FzXY7nR
— Simon Mansfield (@Siyfion) March 2, 2023
Operational disruptions at airports due to the presence of drones have become increasingly common over the past decade as the sale of drones has become more popular. Impact with an aircraft can have tragic consequences, so as a precaution flights are suspended.
While several technologies have already been developed to neutralize drones at airport perimeters, they are not yet widely deployed.
Update: at 19:01 local time the Ryanair flight FR513 departing to Bristol took off, followed by the Iberia flight IB3791 to Madrid, although there hasn’t been an official release regarding flights resumption at Dublin Airport.
Update II: at 19:17 Dublin Airport confirmed that flight operations resumed at 18:59 «after a confirmed drone sighting suspected operations at 18.27 (..) 3 flights were diverted discommoding passengers as a result of this reckless & illegal activity of flying a drone within 5km of Dublin Airport».
