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Latvia closes airspace due to drone on the go

2020-05-03T20:26:44.400Z



Latvia's airspace and Riga International Airport were closed to all commercial flights after a 5.5-meter-wide drone lost contact with its operators.

"We lost contact with this experimental aircraft during a scheduled test flight, which should have caused the drone to go into emergency engine stop mode, but that did not happen for a unknown reason, " said Jevgenijs Silnikovs, representative of the manufacturer, the Latvian company UAV Factory, to the agency LETA.

According to him, the drone's fuel reserves and batteries allow it to navigate for 60 hours at several kilometers above sea level. "The airspace around Riga has been closed to all flights, including the few passenger and cargo flights that are maintained during the Covid-19 pandemic , " tweeted Transport Minister Talis Linkaits Sunday afternoon. midday. At least one cargo flight from Urumqi in China has been diverted to Tallinn.

Read also: Drones could soon fly like birds

On Sunday, the military used old Mi-17 helicopters and an Antonov An-2 biplane, these old-style aircraft being the only ones capable of flying slowly enough to be able to locate the drone whose speed does not exceed 70 km / h. "Search flights will resume at dawn tomorrow morning," confirmed a spokesman for the Civil Aviation Agency, Aivis Vincevs.

UAV Factory was founded as a technology startup in 2009. Last year it made 3.5 million euros in profit. The Latvian Air Force is a major user of its devices, but it also has a sales office in the United States.

Source: lefigaro

All news articles on 2020-05-03

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