Drone intrusion grounds flights at Vietnam's busiest airport for 2 hours

The incident follows a series of drone-related disruptions at Vietnamese airports. On June 6, the crew of a Hanoi-Cam Ranh flight spotted an unmanned aircraft near Noi Bai Airport. Departures stopped for nearly an hour, delaying 16 flights. On March 15, an object believed to be a drone appeared near the landing approach at Cat Bi Airport in Hai Phong. Four flights diverted to Noi Bai, and operations did not return to normal for about four hours.

The Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam recorded repeated UAV incursions into Da Nang's takeoff and landing airspace between September 2025 and February 2026, at distances of three to 12 nautical miles and altitudes of 1,000 to 3,800 feet. During the Lunar New Year holiday in February, 54 aircraft were forced to hold or alter their approach.

Regulations bar drones outright within 8 km of an airport. Under procedures the aviation authority revised in March, an airport can return to normal operations once 60 minutes pass with no further detection. UAVs inside active flight areas can force aircraft into holding patterns, change takeoff and landing procedures, or send them to alternate airports, the authority says. It rates a collision between a drone and an aircraft as a direct threat to aviation safety.

Tan Son Nhat handled more than 42.4 million passengers on 255,376 flights in 2025, the most of any airport in Vietnam. Traffic there peaked at over 177,000 passengers on 1,069 flights on Feb. 22 this year, the busiest day in the airport's history.