The Hidden Cost of Drone Incursions: Why Airports Need Counter-UAS

The sighting of rogue drones near airports is more than just a nuisance, it’s a multimillion-euro threat to the global aviation ecosystem. The latest incidents at Copenhagen and Oslo airports underline how a few small, commercially available drones can bring global travel to a standstill and create costs that ripple across airlines, airports, passengers, and entire economies.

At Copenhagen Airport, a four-hour shutdown disrupted roughly 100 flights, half of which had to be diverted to alternate destinations. About 20,000 passengers were directly impacted, facing missed connections, delays, or outright cancellations. For airlines, the costs of each heavily disrupted flight are measured not just in lost revenue but in extra fuel burn, crew time, overtime, and passenger compensation. Using conservative assumptions, Copenhagen’s drone incident likely saddled airlines and the airport with losses in the €5–10 million range.

Oslo Airport faced a smaller but still costly disruption, with a four-hour suspension affecting just over a dozen flights. Even on that reduced scale, the economic damage likely fell between €0.5 and €1.2 million. Taken together, the two Nordic airports bore a combined financial hit in the neighborhood of €5.5–11 million in a single day. And that figure only reflects immediate, measurable costs. It excludes the harder-to-quantify ripple effects, such as cascading delays at other airports, the opportunity cost of missed business meetings, and lost productivity across industries.           

Who Pays the Price of Drone Incursions?

The costs of a drone-related disruption stretch far beyond airport operators:

• Airlines bear direct operational costs: diversions, fuel consumed, crew overtime, and delays in repositioning aircraft.
• Airports lose revenue from landing fees, concessions, and ground handling.
• Passengers face missed connections, lost working hours, ruined vacations, or extra accommodation expenses.
• Local economies suffer from sudden drops in traveler spending and business disruptions.

Together, these layers of impact show that one unauthorized drone can create losses that rival the economic footprint of a natural disaster or labor strike, except that drones are more prevalent and drone incidents are harder to anticipate.

A Global and Growing Pattern

These incidents in Copenhagen and Oslo are not isolated anomalies. Drone incursions around airports are a global problem. The first and perhaps most notable headline-grabbing drone disruption was at Gatwick Airport in December 2018, when a shutdown due to a reported rogue drone incursion stranded more than 140,000 passengers and was estimated to cost airlines over £50 million. There have been many since then, and the frequency of incidents is increasing. Drones in restricted airspace are not simply a matter of aviation safety or regulatory compliance; they are an economic risk multiplier.

Why Legacy Countermeasures Fall Short

Traditional defenses against rogue drones face significant drawbacks. Radar may miss small, low-altitude drones, especially in cluttered airport environments. Visual detection is inconsistent, weather-dependent, and requires a clear line-of-sight. Kinetic interdiction is highly problematic since shooting down drones risks collateral damage and requires clearing the airspace around the airport for miles. Jamming solutions disrupt the avionics of authorized aircraft, including authorized drones conducting essential operations, also requiring airspace to be cleared. 

Environments as sensitive as airports demand safe counter-drone technology that provides precision, control, and operational continuity. That is the differentiator delivered by RF-cyber technology.

D-Fend’s EnforceAir2 enables airport security authorities to single out rogue drones in restricted airspace, distinguish them from authorized drones, and, when allowed by regulations and performed by authorized personnel, take control and land them in a prearranged safe zone. This process is fast and reduces the risk of costly shutdowns. Contending with the incident takes seconds, eliminating costly downtime and helping to safeguard passenger journeys, with no collateral disruption to communications, navigation, or legitimate drone activity.

This cyber-based takeover approach potentially represents one of the safest, most operationally efficient counter-UAS methods available to the aviation sector.

A Costly Reminder

As drones become more widespread, airports and governments need to consider deploying counter-UAS solutions capable of safely detecting, tracking, and mitigating rogue drones without endangering passengers or property. 

The Nordic disruptions of September 2025 serve as another costly reminder that downtime from drones is not theoretical. It is happening now, it is increasing, and it is extremely expensive. As regulations evolve, airports should prepare to deploy effective counter‑drone solutions to avoid risking not just monetary losses, but also erosion of public trust in aviation reliability.

Protecting airports from rogue drones is no longer optional, it’s a business imperative, a safety requirement, and an economic safeguard.