Gatwick Airport Shutdown – Drone Sightings Spread Unease
In the lead up to Christmas, one of the busiest airports in Europe found itself subject to several delays, cancellations and a shutdown. This past Thursday, on 20th December, Gatwick Airport was home to several drone sightings.
The initial reports began pouring in from Wednesday around 9 pm local time in Sussex (where the airport is located). Flights were immediately suspended as two drones were discovered near the runway. There were attempts to reopen the airport much later in the night, but this only lasted 45 minutes as another drone was spotted.
Roughly 20 police units investigated the airfield in an attempt to find the operators of the drones on Thursday. During midday, another drone was spotted. By nighttime, the government shared that there were plans to deploy the military to assist reopening efforts, though their exact role was not disclosed. Reports noticed that the drones seem to appear right as the airport was in the process of resuming operations.
The situation finally came to a conclusion by Friday as Gatwick Airport was reopened by 6 am. This is over 24 hours after the initial sighting. Its website has, however, made it clear that flights are still subject to cancellations and delays, so it looks like it won’t be smooth sailing just yet.
Due to the amount of panic and concern caused by this incident, a whole new discussion has arisen on the topic of drone security. Many experts have stated over the years that drones pose a massive liability to sensitive locations like airports. The entire situation at Gatwick essentially supports that notion, seeing as how the second largest airport in the United Kingdom could be shut down so easily.
Airports and drones seem to be a very unpleasant mix. Within this year alone, the number of aircraft scares caused by drones has risen as high as 100 as documented by the British government. This is in stark contrast to 2013, a year in which there were absolutely no scares of this nature. This isn’t limited to the United Kingdom, however, as planes recently survived colliding into drones in both Mexico and Canada.
In light of the inconvenience and chaos caused by the entire affair, it’s beginning to look like airports need to seriously address the potential threat posed by drones. Within roughly 24 hours, over 800 flights were affected by cancellations, while 100,000 passengers were diverted. It’s important to note that in this particular instance, the situation was admittedly a small-scale affair. While there may have been approximately 50 sightings, the event in itself was not the worst possible scenario.
As such, one can hope that greater efforts are made to protect airports from similar incidents in the future.