Gatwick Airport: Drone sightings cause delays

The shutdown started just after 21:00, when two drones were spotted being flown over the airfield.
"Multiple reports" of further sightings followed, a Gatwick spokesman said, and all flights to and from the airport were suspended.
The runway was briefly reopened at about 03:01, the airport said, but forced to close again about 45 minutes later amid "a further sighting of drones".Mr Woodroofe told the BBC two drones had been seen flying "over the perimeter fence and into where the runway operates from", sparking "very significant disruption".
He said 20 police units were hunting for the drones' pilot, but police had not wanted to shoot the devises down because of the risk from stray bullets.

Gatwick Airport: Drone sightings cause delays

So this has been ongoing for about half a day now. It seems odd to me that after all these hours they haven't disabled/destroyed the drones. I have seen on Twitter lots of unhappy people and a few questioning if it's a cover for some bigger reason to have the airport closed and flights delayed.

Here is a few other sources all similar.
Sky News

The Australian

Telegraph

Huh? They can find kids with laser pens, but not a couple of drone pilots? What kind of range do drones operate at? I can't imagine the 20 police units had that much of an area to search.

It really is another level of stupid to fly a drone near a passenger flight, I hope I never read of a tradegy caused by such idiotic behaviour.

Slowly but surely we descend into idiocracy

a reply to: SlowNail

Yeah I wouldn't think it would have a huge range without some upgrades. I have a cheap drone that says the range is only a couple hundred feet. Although the longer it goes on the more I think it is a cover story for something else.

originally posted by: SlowNail
Huh? They can find kids with laser pens, but not a couple of drone pilots? What kind of range do drones operate at? I can't imagine the 20 police units had that much of an area to search.

A pretty big area - even my little $350 DJI Spark can go about 2 miles without modification so thats about 8 square miles to search.

20 units to cover that kind of area is really not alot once you factor in that the persons could be inside a car or van and even extending the range with bigger antennas.

They can jam mobile phones rendering them useless when people get rowdy, but can't disable these things when they're inconveniencing and putting people at risk?

Seems legit.

a reply to: 1Angrylightbulb

Im in Canada, so I just heard about this on the CBC.
From the images, I was able to tell it is a DJI Mavic - I'm a bit of a drone expert around here.
So I contacted the Sussex police and gave them some info on how to look into whos flying that bird.

DJI registers all their drones to pilots.
The also can tell who is flying beyond their geofencing safety measures.
Hopefully, they find the pukes doing this and charge the pants off them.

a reply to: gallop

Jamming mobiles across a wide area is pretty simple in comparison to jamming a directional drone remote signal.

There are things like microwave cannons and other tools available and being tested including using larger drones and even trained eagles have been tested !!!

Most commercially available drones capable of long distance flying already have a kind of "geo fence" built into the software that does not allow you to fly within close proximity to an airport without hacking them.

So I'd guess these were either these were short range toy drones being flown by kids close by. Long range drones specifically hacked to allow flying into a geo fenced zone like an airport or custom built drones.

The fact the lights are on means they should be trackable from the air at the very least as the battery life is only around 15-25 mins on every the best drones out there before they need to return home.

Judging from how close the drones are to the airport terminal and the height it appears to be flying at I cant imagine these are "toy" drones as most would max out at 100m or so.

www.mirror.co.uk...

Scumbags "having a laugh", or just plain ignorant people who think it's an intelligent thing to do. Of course, we all know drones can also be used as cheap flying bombs, re ISIS and Venezuela, so these incidents also have a serious undertone.

How to stop them? Well, I am sure the military could rig up some missile platforms, but that's overkill, and the militarisation of our airports won't be acceptable to the public. I expect that some form of commercial electronic solution is sitting in the wings, but it'll then be a race by drone manufacturers to sidestep.

At some point drones that are "toys" will be throttled in some way, including the bands of operation, while the larger commercial drones will be licenced.

Are there any pics of these 'drones' out there at Gatwick? First thought was a pair of ufo orbs playing around that area. Like the Chicago O hare airport ufo

a reply to: 1Angrylightbulb

The current message is that they are "industrial" drones.

Now, I don't know about you, but I've never heard of an "industrial" drone before. I think what they meant was military grade, but didn't want to say that. Clearly, they have capabilities beyond what a consumer could buy off the shelf, so if this story is true, I expect to find out this has been an organised attempt at sabotage, by someone for probably political reasons.

Didn't a plane hit a drone recently? I'm sure I saw a picture of a plane with damage, from what was reportedly a drone strike, within just the past few days.

And now this? We could very well be looking at the "next generation" of terrorist attack. If a drone got sucked into a jet engine during takeoff, it could easily result in a crash.


a reply to: Dem0nc1eaner
I've heard of drones being used to survey forests, monitor oil rigs, and things along those lines. I'm sure there are drones available that are a few steps up from the toys you can buy at WalMart, that have longer range, a better battery life, and a better-quality camera.

a reply to: Dem0nc1eaner

These are considered industrial drones.


a reply to: AndyFromMichigan

A 737-800 in Mexico reported a drone strike to the nose recently. It hasn't been confirmed that it was a drone though.

www.flyingmag.com...

a reply to: Zaphod58

That's the incident.

a reply to: Dem0nc1eaner

I have 2 industrial drones myself.
As well have NDA's with 3 countries im helping to develop different aspects of their industrial grade drones.

There are a lot differences between consumer/ industrial/ military level drones.

Local guy was posting a lot of beach videos on Facebook. When I told him he was too near an airport he didn't care. 3 Days later front page news.

a reply to: mikell

I watched a video of a guy that flew a drone right over the top of a commercial flight on final approach. He just wanted a really good picture of the plane, and didn't even think, or care, about any risks.

I have 2 industrial drones myself.
As well have NDA's with 3 countries im helping to develop different aspects of their industrial grade drones.

There are a lot differences between consumer/ industrial/ military level drones.

Here is one of the industrial drones I helped develop:

This has been going on for most of the day, how long can these drones stay airborne? Is the drone still airborne now? If it isn't how come the airspace is still closed