London’s Gatwick airport suspends all flights after ‘multiple’ reports of drones

Christmas tradition of travel chaos continues

Nothing but blue sky above London Gatwick

No flights have arrived at or left London’s Gatwick Airport since just before 21:00 UTC last night after drones were apparently spotted over the airspace.

Chris Woodroofe, Gatwick’s chief operating officer, told the BBC’s Today programme [from 1:09.39] on Radio 4 this morning that 20 police units from two forces were hunting down the drone operator as “that is the way to disable the drone”. He added: “We also have the helicopter up in the air.”

Woodroofe said that “two drones” had been spotted by staff the night before. “They were over [the runway]… over the perimeter fence and into where the runway operates from…”

The COO confirmed that another drone sighting had been made just minutes before he began speaking to host John Humphrys. At around 07:12 UTC, he said: “In the last five minutes we saw drones back over the perimeter fence in our runway and taxiway area”…

Answering the question on everyone’s lips as they pulled imaginary triggers at the air while scoffing, he told Today that police had advised that “it would be dangerous to seek to shoot the drone down because of what may happen to the stray bullets”.

Reg reporter Richard Speed, literally our man on the ground, is one of the 2,000 people whose flights have been unable to take off. He told El Reg‘s London HQ: “For some reason, only the robot voice is allowed to use the tannoy, [which] means airline staff are having to yell updates from the info desks.

“Flight crew and cabin crew are also milling about. ‘We know as much as you do – no one is telling us anything’.”

“Anything scheduled after 8am is now cancelled. If I was a drone hobbyist I would be seriously worried about [the] kneejerk reaction.”

Air traffic control organisation Eurocontrol said Gatwick – UK’s second biggest airport – would be closed until 12pm, in an update issued at 09:06.

Thursday 07.40: Flights to and from Gatwick remain suspended, due to drone activity. Please do not travel to the airport without checking with your airline first. We’re sorry for the inconvenience today, but the safety of our passengers and staff is our no.1 priority.

— Gatwick Airport LGW (@Gatwick_Airport) December 20, 2018

The runway was closed on 21:00 on Wednesday night – trapping thousands of people in the terminals awaiting direct and connecting flights in the runup to the Christmas break.

The airfield was opened briefly at 03:01 but was sealed off about 44 minutes later due to a “further sighting of drones“.

The airport said in a tweet an hour ago that it was working with the Sussex* police and wouldn’t reopen the runway until it had “suitable reassurance” it was safe to do so.

Angry travellers took to the microblogging platform to complain. Tinkerbell81 opined: “You seriously expect us to believe that ‘drone activity’ shuts an airport down for nearly 12 hours …….. it was raining hard most of the night! Finding the ‘operator’ would be a needle in a haystack…”

Although “Jaeyeon Park”, who asked the location of the gate for a British Airways flight, must have been relieved to have been told:

Your be fine nothing has departed for 10 hrs

— X-Ray (@raybrown007) December 20, 2018

Said our man on the scene: “I’d have an airport beer, but the queue for Wetherspoons is epic.” ®

* In the tradition of large city airports, Gatwick is in one of the home counties.