The European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex) reached a milestone in 2026 when one of its aircraft completed the agency’s 1,000th aerial surveillance mission of the year, carrying out a joint sortie with Cabo Verde off the West African coast. The King Air 350, operating on a six-and-a-half-hour flight, detected 73 contacts with no suspicious activity reported.
Frontex aircraft have now logged more than 5,060 flight hours and contributed to around 7,900 detections across operations on two continents in 2026. Eight countries are currently supported by Frontex aerial surveillance, with the agency expecting to expand that number to 12 before the end of the year. Surveillance operations cover the EU’s external maritime borders and extend to partner countries in the Atlantic and Mediterranean.
The milestone comes alongside a 40 per cent drop in irregular border crossings into the EU in the first four months of 2026, the steepest decline recorded in recent years. The sharpest fall was on the Western African Route — where crossings were down 78 per cent compared to the same period in 2025 — partly attributed to the effectiveness of joint aerial surveillance with partner countries such as Cabo Verde.
Aerial surveillance is one of Frontex’s core tools for supporting national authorities at external borders. Aircraft are tasked across multiple missions simultaneously, including search and rescue — detecting vessels in distress and relaying coordinates to rescue coordination centres — alongside law enforcement and environmental monitoring, including pollution detection at sea.
For the Baltic maritime sector, Frontex aerial surveillance intersects with offshore monitoring. The agency’s expanding operational footprint, combined with growing use of autonomous aerial systems, mirrors parallel developments in the offshore wind sector, where aerial and drone-based inspection is becoming standard practice across wind farm O&M operations.
