Last night, several flights from the temporarily closed Vilnius airport were redirected to Riga, as reported on the flight monitoring website "Flightradar 24."
According to the website's data, from 11:00 PM on Saturday until air traffic resumed at Vilnius airport, seven flights were redirected to Riga.
A flight of the Latvian airline "airBaltic" from Zurich to Vilnius was also redirected to Riga during the night, while the flight from Vilnius to Zurich at 5:30 AM was canceled. Some "airBaltic" flights on Sunday morning from Vilnius were delayed by about half an hour to an hour.
Late Saturday evening, 25 weather balloons from Belarus, which are typically used by smugglers, entered Lithuanian airspace. Due to a balloon spotted near Vilnius airport, its operations were temporarily suspended.
Air traffic at the airport was closed from 10:16 PM to 4:50 AM.
"Usually, such balloons are launched by smugglers. With a favorable wind direction, their number can exceed several dozen," said Darius Buta, a representative of the Lithuanian Crisis Management Center.
The Center continues to investigate how many weather balloons landed on Lithuanian territory and how many of them were carrying smuggled goods.
