Unmanned Aerial Vehicle The latest drone news
(Corrects paragraph 7 to show last time drone seen was Thursday
not Friday)
* Gatwick reopens after 36 hours of chaos
* 700 flights to take off on Friday
* Drone operators not yet detained
* Army and police snipers hunt rogue drones
* Pilots union concerned at risk of collision
By Toby Melville
GATWICK, England, Dec 21 (Reuters) – London’s Gatwick
Airport reopened on Friday after a mystery saboteur wrought 36
hours of travel chaos for more than 100,000 Christmas travellers
by using drones to play cat-and-mouse with police snipers and
the army.
After the biggest disruption at Gatwick, Britain’s second
busiest airport, since a volcanic ash cloud in 2010, Gatwick
said around 700 planes were due to take off on Friday, although
there would still be delays and cancellations.
Britain deployed unidentified military technology to guard
the airport against what Transport Secretary Chris Grayling said
were thought to be several drones.
“I think passengers are safe,” Grayling said. “This kind of
incident is unprecedented anywhere in the world.”
The motivation of the drone operator, or operators, was
unclear. Police said there was nothing to suggest the crippling
of one of Europe’s busiest airports was a terrorist attack.
Gatwick’s drone nightmare is thought to be the most
disruptive yet at a major airport and indicates a new
vulnerability that will be scrutinised by security forces and
airport operators across the world.
The army and police snipers were called in to hunt down the
drones, thought to be industrial style craft, which flew near
the airport every time it tried to reopen on Thursday. The last
time a drone was spotted at the airport was at 2200 GMT on
Thursday.
The perpetrator has not yet been detained but the police
said they had a number of possible suspects. No group has
claimed responsibility publicly and police said there was no
evidence another state was involved.
Sussex Police Assistant Chief Constable Steve Barry said
they were keeping an open mind about who was responsible.
“In terms of the motivation, there’s a whole spectrum of
possibilities, from the really high-end criminal behaviour that
we’ve seen, all the way down to potentially, just individuals
trying to be malicious, trying to disrupt the airport,” he said.
After a boom in drone sales, unmanned aerial vehicles have
become a growing menace at airports across the world.
In Britain, the number of near misses between private drones
and aircraft more than tripled between 2015 and 2017, with 92
incidents recorded last year.
THERMAL IMAGING?
The British Airline Pilots’ Association (BALPA) said it
understood “detection and tracking equipment” had been installed
around Gatwick’s perimeter.
BALPA said that it was extremely concerned at the risk of a
drone collision. Flying drones within 1 km (0.6 mile) of a
British airport boundary is punishable by five years in prison.
The defence ministry refused to comment on what technology
was deployed but drone experts said airports needed to deploy
specialist radar reinforced by thermal imaging technology to
detect such unmanned flying vehicles.
Other ways to tackle them is typically by frequency jamming
that can disable or disrupt control signals and the GPS signals
that allow the drones to navigate.
The drone sightings caused misery for travellers, many
sleeping on the airport floor as they searched for alternative
routes to holidays and Christmas family gatherings.
Flights were halted at 2103 GMT on Wednesday after two
drones were spotted near the airfield. The disruption affected
at least 120,000 people on Wednesday and Thursday, with
thousands more to be disrupted on Friday.
It was not immediately clear what the financial impact would
be on the main airlines operating from Gatwick including easyJet
, British Airways and Norwegian.
Britain’s Civil Aviation Authority said it considered the
event to be an “extraordinary circumstance” meaning airlines are
not obliged to pay compensation to affected passengers.
Airlines will have to refund customers who no longer wish to
travel however and try to reschedule flights to get passengers
to their destinations.
A Reuters witness at Gatwick’s South Terminal said the
airport was busy, with many people waiting with luggage and
queues for service desks, but not unusually so for such a day.
Some airport staff handed out chocolate and Christmas elf
toys to stranded passengers.
Some, like Sarah Garghan-Watson, chose to stick it out at
the airport overnight, having arrived at 8 a.m. on Thursday.
“It’s now 2 o’clock in the morning at Gatwick, and it’s very
bright and very noisy. It’s now also very cold,” she said in a
video shown on Sky.
“All I can see tonight … is a sign that says ‘no more
sleeps until the beach’. And here we are, sleeping, in the
stairs at Gatwick, because there’s no flights.”
(Editing by Alison Williams)
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