Belgium to tighten controls over private aircraft in anti-smuggling crackdown

Published on 27/05/2025 - 17:24 GMT+2

Belgian Customs will commencement utilizing subject radar systems to show backstage craft much intimately successful a bid to combat smuggling, officials person said. 

The move comes arsenic authorities admit that smugglers are taking advantage of constricted oversight astatine mini airports and heliports crossed nan country.

Private planes are often utilized to carrier drugs, weapons, rate and illicit equipment pinch small to nary scrutiny. 

Belgium has astir 150 airfields and heliports, galore of which let backstage craft to onshore and depart without general customs checks.

Officials opportunity this deficiency of surveillance has made them a magnet for trafficking operations. 

"There are thousands and thousands of flights successful Belgium. Customs concentrated each its efforts and controls connected nan six astir important airports, but nan different 150 were really a unsighted spot for us," said Kristian Vanderwaeren, nan General Administrator of Belgian Customs. 

Private craft connection further advantages to criminals, including elastic routes, accelerated turnaround times connected nan crushed and nan expertise to move disconnected transponders – devices that let craft to beryllium tracked – making them invisible to modular monitoring systems. 

To amended monitoring, a customs serviceman will now beryllium seconded to Belgium's nationalist airspace information centre.

From there, they will usage radar information provided by nan Ministry of Defence to place and emblem suspicious flights – moreover those pinch abnormal transponders. 

"This will past alteration america to nonstop a team, a brigade, to an airdrome where, until now, we haven’t carried retired immoderate checks," explained Vanderwaeren. 

Authorities recorded only astir 30 smuggling-related offences involving backstage craft successful Belgium past year. But pinch stepped-up surveillance, officials expect detections to rise.