Two eastern-Polish airports—Lublin (LUZ) and Rzeszów-Jasionka (RZE)—were forced to suspend all civilian movements for nearly two hours on Wednesday afternoon, 7 October 2026, after the Polish Air Navigation Services Agency (PANSA) closed local airspace to accommodate an unannounced air-defence exercise. The Operational Command of the Armed Forces confirmed that the closure formed part of a cyclical drill testing Poland’s surface-to-air response. Military planners routinely withhold specific times and zones to preserve the realism of the scenario; as a result, PANSA issued immediate NOTAMs that prohibited take-offs and landings from about 16:00 local time. According to airport spokesman Piotr Jankowski, four departing flights—three Wizz Air A321 rotations to London-Luton, Oslo and Eindhoven plus one LOT DHC-8 service to Warsaw—were delayed, while two inbound charters were placed in holding patterns over south-eastern Poland until the ban was lifted. Ground handling companies quickly rescheduled slots, and full operations resumed before the evening bank of flights to Brussels Charleroi and Gdańsk. Although the disruption was short, the incident highlights how NATO-member Poland’s increasingly intensive military exercises are intersecting with commercial traffic. Lublin and Rzeszów sit just 100 km from the Ukrainian border; RZE in particular has become a strategic logistics hub for humanitarian and defence cargo since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Airport managers have therefore developed contingency plans that include rapid re-sequencing of departures and pre-cleared diversion airports at Kraków and Warsaw. For business travellers and mobility managers the key takeaway is to monitor Polish NOTAMs—even for domestic hops—and build buffer time into itineraries when travelling through the country’s eastern gateways. Airlines advise registering for flight-status text alerts and, where possible, booking fully flexible fares on routes near sensitive military corridors.
Source: Radio Lublin
