{"id":579430,"date":"2026-09-22T08:18:13","date_gmt":"2026-09-22T05:18:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/reform.news\/?p=579430"},"modified":"2026-09-22T10:58:30","modified_gmt":"2026-09-22T07:58:30","slug":"vilnius-airport-suspended-operations-due-to-smugglers-weather-balloons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/vilnius-airport-suspended-operations-due-to-smugglers-weather-balloons","title":{"rendered":"Vilnius Airport Suspended Operations Due To Smugglers\u2019 Weather Balloons"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"fb-root\"><\/div>\n<p>Vilnius Airport suspended operations overnight due to weather balloons used by smugglers.<\/p>\n<p>According to the airport operator, restrictions on the use of the airspace were introduced at 11:25 p.m. yesterday and remained in effect until 2:45 a.m. today. They were imposed because <i>\u201cradar signals characteristic of balloons were detected in areas posing an increased risk to aviation.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n<p>The disruption affected 17 flights and more than 3,100 passengers. Twelve flights were diverted to other airports: four to Riga, one to Warsaw and seven to Kaunas. Three flights were delayed and two were canceled.<\/p>\n<p>Vilnius Airport has been closed more than 10 times this year because of balloons flying from Belarus. It should be noted that in the autumn months, wind direction often favors smugglers using weather balloons to transport cigarettes from Belarus to Lithuania. Similar incidents were very frequent from October to December last year. Against this backdrop, Lithuania even closed its land border with Belarus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Vilnius Airport suspended operations overnight due to weather balloons used by smugglers. According to the airport operator, restrictions on the use of the airspace were introduced at 11:25 p.m. yesterday and remained in effect until 2:45 a.m. today. They were imposed because \u201cradar signals characteristic of balloons were detected in areas posing an increased risk [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":119,"featured_media":497700,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sharing_image":{"poster":"https:\/\/reform.news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/6ab2352a7de4e.jpg","width":1200,"height":630,"template":"691142dd","mode":"auto"},"_sharing_image_fieldset":{"dTVKfmI95PYT":"Vilnius Airport Suspended Operations Due To Smugglers\u2019 Weather Balloons"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[142339,142338,143284,143094],"tags":[143120],"class_list":["post-579430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-main","category-news","category-world","category-incident","tag-meteozondy"],"wps_subtitle":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/119"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=579430"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579430\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":579431,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579430\/revisions\/579431"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/497700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=579430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=579430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=579430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}