Gatwick Airport (UK) suspends flights due to Drone activity

Mellowamoya · Dec 23, 2018

Now reading an article in a UK paper saying there may not have been a drone at all, Police say 'there may never have been a drone' at Gatwick Airport

the-bunker · Dec 23, 2018

If there's zero evidence then you have to wonder !

zocalo · Dec 23, 2018

gnirtS said:
Actually not true. Any aircraft on a standard 3 degree glideslope will be below 500ft from about 3km from touchdown.

Oops. Forgot to edit that bit in light of the posts about the 3deg glideslope that were posted while I was typing. Sure, some of that will be inside the perimeter, but even so there's definitely a potential for conflict there - according to my math to about 2.5km from the point the aircraft get airborne, which is definitely going to be outside the 1km zone for pretty much every runway in the UK, especially if it's only 1km from the centre of the airfield.

Hopefully if that gets tweaked next year we'll get something like DJI's new DFZs that include the flight paths, rather than a blanket 2km or whatever. Of course, that does rely on the CAA taking a pragmatic approach, which doesn't seem very likely given recent events.

NetDep · Dec 23, 2018

Mellowamoya said:
Now reading an article in a UK paper saying there may not have been a drone at all, Police say 'there may never have been a drone' at Gatwick Airport

Which would be no shock at all! So many of the "drone" sightings are either not drones. balloons, plastic bags or something that the ignorant, uninformed public that has been whipped into a frenzy to hate all things drone thought they saw. Keeping a keen eye on this - when it is proven (if it is ) that this was not a drone at all - the politicians will all cry, "Well, it could've been a done," to justify their bans and otherwise publicity seeking fear mongering legislation.

gnirtS · Dec 23, 2018

the-bunker said:
OK - so the plane does not land at the beginning/end of the runway & the perimeter is well beyond the runway...

In Gatwicks case 600m for 08 and 700m for 26.

For other UK airports its even less than that.

sar104 · Dec 23, 2018

the-bunker said:
OK - so the plane does not land at the beginning/end of the runway & the perimeter is well beyond the runway...

The threshold on LGW 08L, for example, is 520 m from the fence. At 1 km from the fence, the glide is 80 m (262 ft) AGL.

sar104 · Dec 23, 2018

the-bunker said:
If there's zero evidence then you have to wonder !

If you don't count the clear video of a quad flying over the airport, or the report from the controllers in the tower who saw one approach the tower.

4wd · Dec 23, 2018

sar104 said:
If you don't count the clear video of a quad flying over the airport, or the report from the controllers in the tower who saw one approach the tower.

You mean the blurry spec against a featureless cloudy sky - it could be another aircraft much higher or even wind-blown litter (history for that).

At present we have something more akin to mass hysteria with "multiple drones" able to stay in the air for prolonged periods, but not be photographed - then if a police helicopter approaches they are able to disappear as if by teleportation and cannot be followed back to base despite apparently making up to 50 separate flights (on it's own not very believable).

You can bet the found crashed drone will have been in some bushes for weeks and is nothing like the 'industrial'

drone description.

zocalo · Dec 23, 2018

Mellowamoya said:
Now reading an article in a UK paper saying there may not have been a drone at all, Police say 'there may never have been a drone' at Gatwick Airport

A bit out of context there. What they are saying is they are keeping an open mind and that is one possibility, but further down it also says: "But he said they were working on a range of information from members of the public, police officers and staff working at Gatwick who had reported otherwise."

Police officers are generally taken as credible witnesses, and supposedly one of the drones buzzed the control tower which would seem to be a slam dunk. Lots of misunderstandings too - e.g. "50 sightings" translating into "50 flights", rather than multiple people witnessing the same flight. Yeah, I'm sure there were a lot of erroneous reports from the public and in the media, but there do seem to be a few credible ones in the mix so time will tell, I guess.

Slim.slamma · Dec 23, 2018

Comical
Gatwick police boss admits there may have been NO DRONE at all – despite days of chaos
I quit

sar104 · Dec 23, 2018

4wd said:
You mean the blurry spec against a featureless cloudy sky - it could be another aircraft much higher or even wind-blown litter (history for that).

At present we have something more akin to mass hysteria with "multiple drones" able to stay in the air for prolonged periods, but not be photographed - then if a police helicopter approaches they are able to disappear as if by teleportation and cannot be followed back to base despite apparently making up to 50 separate flights (on it's own not very believable).

You can bet the found crashed drone will have been in some bushes for weeks and is nothing like the 'industrial' drone description.

You must have been watching different videos.

Video: Drone is spotted flying over Gatwick airport in London | Daily Mail Online

ataraxia · Dec 23, 2018

MAY have been no drone. Of course there may have been no drone, we've been discussing this since it all started, the police are just keeping an open mind (this is a good thing in case it isn't obvious). Their only mistake is saying this to our stoopid media.

4wd · Dec 23, 2018

They only needed some dogs anyway, Drones go away if there are dogs
Liz Truss on drones may be the most stupid thing the government has said this year

Avtur79 · Dec 23, 2018

SpinItUp · Dec 23, 2018

Avtur79 said:
BBC News - Gatwick drones pair 'no longer suspects'
Gatwick drones pair 'no longer suspects'

Only a bit new in that is (nothing that's, not already known)

A damaged drone found close to the airport on Saturday was being forensically examined, he said.

Det Ch Supt Tingley said it was "a working assumption" the device could be connected to their investigation, but officers were keeping "an open mind".

FoxhallGH · Dec 23, 2018

Mellowamoya said:
Now reading an article in a UK paper saying there may not have been a drone at all, Police say 'there may never have been a drone' at Gatwick Airport

Bit of a strange headline, as the same article talks about there being a load of eyewitness reports. Big problem with CCTV on an airfield, is that pretty much all of it is looking down at tarmac & taxi-ways so there's very little chance of getting any meaningful CCTV of the drones - which is probably why we've seen nothing over the last few days.
Strange to also say 'never have been a drone' when Gatwick control staff reported the type of drone to Police after it buzzed the tower.
It looks like these days you literally have to be smacked in the face with the wet fish - otherwise it's fake news!

sar104 · Dec 23, 2018

FoxhallGH said:
Bit of a strange headline, as the same article talks about there being a load of eyewitness reports. Big problem with CCTV on an airfield, is that pretty much all of it is looking down at tarmac & taxi-ways so there's very little chance of getting any meaningful CCTV of the drones - which is probably why we've seen nothing over the last few days.
Strange to also say 'never have been a drone' when Gatwick control staff reported the type of drone to Police after it buzzed the tower.
It looks like these days you literally have to be smacked in the face with the wet fish - otherwise it's fake news!

Apparently so. Many of the posts here and on a similar thread on PhantomPilots are simply painful to read.

Vimana · Dec 23, 2018

Thank you all for earlier responses to my off topic question.

Back to the topic - I cannot believe this latest twist to the tale. Appalling damage to have been done if this turns out to be fake news, at least in part. I hope lawmakers will apply their critical analytical abilities on reliable facts before rushing through any legislation....

collins · Dec 23, 2018

Vimana said:
Thank you all for earlier responses to my off topic question.

Back to the topic - I cannot believe this latest twist to the tale. Appalling damage to have been done if this turns out to be fake news, at least in part. I hope lawmakers will apply their critical analytical abilities on reliable facts before rushing through any legislation....

Unfortunately I suspect that if it is 'fake news' it makes increased regulation 'more likely'. Consider, if you can close Gatwick for 36 hours because of drones when there isnt a drone, what happens if there actually is one?

Johnmcl7 · Dec 23, 2018

FoxhallGH said:
Bit of a strange headline, as the same article talks about there being a load of eyewitness reports. Big problem with CCTV on an airfield, is that pretty much all of it is looking down at tarmac & taxi-ways so there's very little chance of getting any meaningful CCTV of the drones - which is probably why we've seen nothing over the last few days.
Strange to also say 'never have been a drone' when Gatwick control staff reported the type of drone to Police after it buzzed the tower.
It looks like these days you literally have to be smacked in the face with the wet fish - otherwise it's fake news!

It's not strange at all as the reason they're saying it's a possibility is because there is no concrete evidence of the drone, even if there was no CCTV pointing upwards at an airport there was a huge amount of phone cameras around even before it became headline news there will have been a number of high end cameras looking to capture a picture or video of the drone as that would be worth a fortune. Eye witness reports can be useful to point investigators in the right direction but on their own they're usually unreliable as a whole and in this case it appears the police haven't been able to corroborate the eye witness reports. Gatwick control staff did not identify the type of drone, that does in fact highlight the problem with eye witness reports in that they're completely inconsistent and they contradict each other with a supposed fleet of different models of drones that were flying.

I don't dismiss the possibility there was a drone but the stories we've been told from the start have never made the slightest bit of sense, even aside from the lack of photo/video evidence at one of the busiest airports in Europe there's the fact these drones mysteriously appeared and disappeared making it impossible to track them. There's nothing mystical about drones though and with a limited runtime, speed and range at the very least they've have been able to capture footage of these drones and narrow down their landing/take off position. The suggestion has been the take off/landing position was constantly changed to avoid detection but given the way it was plastered all over the news, people would have reported if they'd seen any drones landing or taking off.

To be honest I don't know how anyone familiar with drone technology could believe it possible to carry out sustained flights in the same area without being captured by a camera nor being caught by another drone, helicopter or similar.