London’s Gatwick Airport suspended flights on Sunday when – yet another – reported drone sighting near the facility led authorities to halt operations as a safety precaution until the all-clear was given.
Officials at Gatwick interrupted flights at the airport south of London for about an hour yesterday after a drone was reported flying within the one-mile restricted area around the hub. Neither statements from the facility nor accounts of the incident confirm a UAV had been found in operation, or determined to have been present in the zone before the reopening.
Read: TSA addresses privacy questions before airport drone deployment
The question of whether the drone had indeed violated the airspace restriction is not merely a formality, given Gatwick’s notorious history with purported sightings.
In December of 2018, traffic in and out of Gatwick was halted – and around 1,000 flights canceled or diverted – when a series of drone alerts around the airport were made.
Despite over 100 reports of airspace infractions during that over 36-hour closure, no UAVs were conclusively established as having ever been present in the area, and police investigations into the matter only produced what became the scandal-generating arrest of an innocent couple.
Since then, Gatwick has stopped flights at least one other time due to drone alerts, though like Sunday’s action the suspension was relatively brief and ended without an invasive craft being located.
May 16 Update
Following DroneDJ‘s post yesterday, Gatwick officials confirmed that no drones had been found or otherwise confirmed as having been present around the airport as reported by a cockpit member of an incoming plane and ground staff. Despite the inquiry into the sighting during the pause in traffic, nothing was found to substantiate a UAV operating in the area.
“This investigation followed sightings from a pilot and also airfield staff about a suspected drone close to the flight path of approaching aircraft,” a Gatwick spokesperson said late Monday, supplementing comments made the previous day after normal airport operations had resumed (see below). “Following further investigation, no drone was found and the airfield reopened at 14:35.”
Meantime, video footage uploaded to social media Monday may possibly shed some light on what might have been spotted to set off the alarm. In it, a London-based planespotter filming flights in and out of Gatwick Sunday captured what looked to be several silvery objects – perhaps some kind of weather balloons – hovering “very close to the airport (which looked to be by mistake) less than an hour after that #Gatwick was closed as there was a hunt for a #drone.”
The timing of that balloon sighting doesn’t seem to align with Gatwick’s earlier flight suspension, but in the absence of any other evidence of drones flying in the restricted airspace, that theory at the moment may be the strongest. And at the very least, the video raises the question of why a gaggle of glittery aerial objects were still aloft in proximity to the airport in the wake of a extraordinary shutdown and investigation.
Read more: Another drone intrusion (briefly) halted Gatwick flights in Feb.
Despite about a dozen flights having to been redirected to other airports during the suspension, Gatwick officials were unapologetic about taking steps to assure security whenever the airport’s one-mile drone exclusion zone may have been breached.
“Passenger safety is the airport’s absolute priority and – following established procedures – operations at London Gatwick were suspended temporarily at 1344, while investigations into the sighting of a suspected drone close to the airfield took place,” a Gatwick Airport spokesperson stated in announcing resumption of flights. “These investigations have now completed and the airfield reopened at 1435. Twelve inbound aircraft were diverted to other airports during the investigation, however we expect many of these to return to London Gatwick today.”
The presence of drones in airport airspaces – both alleged and confirmed – is becoming a major concern around the globe as the number of consumer and enterprise craft in operation rise.
Read: Dublin Airport flails in response to recurring drone flights disrupting air traffic
Earlier this year in Ireland, for example, Dublin Airport suspended flights six times in as many weeks following claims of drone activity within its restricted airspace.
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