Overview
- Authorities issued a regionwide drone alert at 3:49 a.m. Friday, which sent F/A-18s to patrol a corridor toward Porvoo and paused Helsinki‑Vantaa flights for about three hours.
- The rescue authority declared the danger over at 7:06 a.m., and the airport resumed operations at 7:19 with no damage or injuries reported.
- Officials gave conflicting accounts of any airspace breach, as an interior rescue chief said at least one drone strayed into Finland while defence spokesmen reported no sightings and the operations chief later called it a false alarm.
- The shutdown diverted at least nine arrivals, including Finnair long‑haul flights to Stockholm and Rovaniemi, and it kept about 1.8 million people in the Uusimaa region indoors for several hours.
- The scare tracks recent spillovers tied to Ukrainian strikes on Russian infrastructure, with Russia claiming it downed 355 drones overnight and Latvia entering a government crisis over a separate drone case.