NATO fighters scrambled over Lithuania trace Vilnius air alert to birds

NATO fighter aircraft took off from Šiauliai Air Base and visually identified a flock of birds as the object that triggered a yellow air alert at Vilnius Airport, Lithuania's National Crisis Management Center said. The alert suspended traffic at the airport for 38 minutes.

The warning covered Vilnius city and district along with the Trakai and Elektrėnai districts, and ran from 12:59 to 13:37 local time on September 13, 2026. State airport operator Lietuvos oro uostai told the news agency BNS that three flights were affected. An aircraft inbound from Antalya and another from Amsterdam diverted to Kaunas Airport before continuing to Vilnius, while a flight that had left Warsaw returned.

According to the crisis management center, radar returns from birds can look like those from drones at first, which prompted authorities to order a further check. The Lithuanian Armed Forces said a drone confirmed by the fighters would have raised the warning to red level, while the absence of a threat would clear the alert. Once the pilots reported what they had seen, the warning was canceled.

The bird alert was separate from an earlier incident the same day. Lithuanian Air Force radars near Varėna picked up an unidentified object at 04:05 local time heading across Lithuanian airspace toward Russia's Kaliningrad region. The armed forces said it covered roughly 60 to 70 kilometers (37 to 43 miles) in about 20 minutes.

Radar data available at the time was not enough to establish what the object was, the military said, adding that it saw no sign of an immediate threat. No alert was issued to the public and no fighters were launched in that case.