Proposed Restricted Area along almost the entire Danish Border to Germany

IAOPA sends us the following news item: The Danish CAA is proposing a restricted area along almost the entire Danish land-border with Germany. The purpose is for the police to patrol the border by drone, but the consequences are severe operational restrictions on two Danish airfields and problems for VFR traffic to fly across the border into Denmark.

The police drone will only operate up to 400 meters from the border but on the Danish side the CAA insist on a 5km buffer zone which means that the two Danish airfields Tønder & Padborg will be directly inside the restricted area and have their operations severely impacted with no guarantee that it will be possible to land or take-off. According to the police the area is expected to be active 24/7 all year long.

Since the restricted area will go up to 1000ft and stretches along almost the entire Danish-German land-border, VFR traffic across the border will also be severely affected if there are clouds below 1000ft.

Among the many controversies surrounding this project is that a 5km buffer-zone is required on the Danish side of the border, but on the German side no such buffer-zone is found necessary and two German airfields which are even closer to the drone operating area will be able to operate unrestricted. It shows that a smaller buffer-zone is a possibility which would save the 2 Danish airfields.

AOPA Denmark is preparing af protest against the plans which are foreseen to come into effect already next month.

The local aeroclub of Tønder has organized a petition agains the plans, which can be found here (in Danish):