Flights Halted Daily in Moscow Region as Drone Alerts Pile Up
Russia's aviation authority has shut down four airports near Moscow for as long as nine hours on some days this month.
By Carmen Wojcik ·
Travelers in the Moscow area have watched their flights get canceled again and again this month. The independent outlet Agentstvo reports that Domodedovo, Sheremetyevo, Zhukovsky and Vnukovo have suspended operations almost daily in October. On some of those days, the closures ran as long as nine hours.
The shutdowns come from a Russian procedure called the carpet protocol, run by the aviation authority Rosaviatsiya. It closes airspace over a region when an aircraft breaks Russian airspace rules, when weapons are used or when unidentified objects show up in the sky. Limits then apply to every flight in the area.
Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelenskyy set out his goal in early September, saying Kyiv would work to cut off airspace around Moscow and other Russian destinations. He addressed airlines, insurers and travelers directly: "Russian airspace will become completely unsafe." Ukraine sent the same warning the next day to the International Civil Aviation Organization.
Oleksandr Laneckij, chief executive of the consultancy Friendly Avia Support, told DW that "essentially, every drone poses a military threat." He compared the disruption to the Houthis in Yemen, who cut into Saudi airspace, and said Ukraine's drone capability runs far past theirs. Military analyst Jan Matvejev said Ukraine could sharply disrupt traffic around Moscow. Setting off the protocol, he said, takes only simple drones without warheads or long range, and Ukraine's arms industry turns out hundreds of such drones a day.
Both experts raised the risks to civilian flights. Laneckij said Russia may lower the bar for declaring the carpet protocol, which raises the danger of crashes like the Azerbaijan Airlines accident on Christmas Day 2024. Investigators say a Russian air-defense missile fired against drones hit that aircraft, killing 38 people. Matvejev said Russia's air-defense rules have changed little since then. Against a low-flying drone shot with a machine gun, he said, the risk to aircraft is extremely low. Missiles carry a different danger, since defects in mass production could send one at a nearby airliner.
Laneckij said whether foreign airlines keep serving Russia turns on the military threat, demand and insurance costs. Insurers that view the risk as very high could raise premiums sharply and push ticket prices up. Russian carriers have left the market, which has lifted demand for seats on the foreign airlines still flying there. "Whether they stay or not depends on the price they have to pay for the danger faced," he said.
Ukraine's own airspace has been shut since Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022. Ukraine struck the Pskov airport in the summer of 2023, and drone debris fell on Sochi airport earlier this month. Russia has hit Ukrainian airports; Zelenskyy said in September that Kyiv's airport and Boryspil, near the capital, were struck.
