HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam — Unauthorized drones forced Tan Son Nhat International Airport to halt flight operations twice on the evening of Aug. 11, triggering three fuel-critical emergency landings and disrupting dozens of flights at Vietnam’s busiest airport.
The first Tan Son Nhat drone intrusion began at 6:14 p.m. local time, when a flight crew spotted an unmanned aerial vehicle flying between 1,800 and 3,000 feet. At one point it came within roughly 500 meters of an aircraft, according to Vietnam’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAAV), cited by VietNamNet. Controllers suspended operations while they worked to track the object, then resumed roughly an hour later.
The reprieve was brief. At 7:34 p.m., a radar unit from the Vietnamese military’s 367th Air Defense Division detected a second drone about 3 kilometers southwest of the airport, forcing a second halt to takeoffs and landings. Flights did not resume until 8:34 p.m.
Together, the two disruptions affected 73 flights, according to the newspaper Lao Dong. Three aircraft made emergency landings after burning through fuel reserves while circling or holding. Controllers diverted 24 flights to alternate airports, routed 19 into holding patterns, and delayed 15 departures on the ground, per CAAV figures reported by Lao Dong.
Tan Son Nhat, which serves Ho Chi Minh City, is Vietnam’s busiest airport by passenger volume. CAAV said the units involved coordinated effectively to protect flight safety, but acknowledged that detection and response still rely heavily on manual visual observation by flight crews and ground personnel, rather than dedicated counter-drone technology.
The incident is one of at least 13 confirmed UAV or unidentified-object intrusions recorded at major Vietnamese airports since the start of 2026, according to Lao Dong’s review of aviation authority data. Da Nang International Airport has been hit hardest, logging six confirmed drone intrusions and one additional multi-drone incident between February and April that affected dozens of flights. Noi Bai and Cat Bi airports in the north have also recorded intrusions, though authorities later identified some objects as kites rather than drones.
CAAV reported that UAV-related disruptions affected 168 flights nationwide in the first six months of 2026 alone. Vietnam Airlines has estimated that a cluster of incidents in February cost roughly 5.6 billion Vietnamese dong (about $220,000) and affected some 9,200 passengers through delays and rerouting. Da Nang airport authorities separately estimated more than 10 billion dong in direct losses.
Following the Tan Son Nhat incidents, Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Security issued a public warning on Aug. 12 about the escalating risk unauthorized drones pose to aviation safety, noting that a collision during takeoff or landing could cause a serious accident. The ministry said it is researching technical systems to detect, track and, when necessary, suppress illegally operated drones near airports, while continuing to pursue legal action against violators.
CAAV has recommended that authorities designate a single lead agency to respond to illegal drone incursions and invest in dedicated detection and early-warning systems, rather than continuing to rely on pilots and ground crews spotting objects by eye. The agency has also proposed stiffer administrative and criminal penalties for unauthorized drone operators.
Aviation safety experts cited by VietNamNet noted that any foreign object entering an active runway or approach corridor — whether a drone, a stray kite or wildlife — poses a collision risk during the most vulnerable phases of flight. Regulators elsewhere are moving in a similar direction: the European Union recently expanded mandatory drone and FOD incident reporting requirements, reflecting a broader push to formalize how airports track and respond to unauthorized UAV activity. Similar drone-related shutdowns have disrupted air traffic at airports elsewhere in the world in recent years, underscoring the difficulty of policing low, slow-moving unmanned aircraft in congested airspace.
Sources
- VietNamNet via Vietnam.vn: “Why could small UAVs cause airports to cease operations?”
- Lao Dong: “Dozens of UAV incidents threaten flight safety, ‘magic eye’ proposal for early detection”
- FODNews: EU Expands Mandatory FOD and Drone Incident Reporting Under New Regulation 2026/1821
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