Gatwick Airport (UK) suspends flights due to Drone activity

[Congoblue]

It is difficult to say but that looks like a police helicopter to me.

 

[FoxhallGH]

I'm trying to be serious...no substantiated pictures, a vague light in the sky taken on a phone camera proves bugger all
where are all the long lens zoomed in shots?, Gatwick allways has a good few professional photographers and spotters hanging about

So - you're saying this is all 'Fake News' ... The activity that was seen all took place last night (you have to be a dedicated spotter to be out there on a winter's evening after 9:00 pm). All you are going to get is lights in the sky - even with fancy zoom lenses...
It actually doesn't matter what it was - even if they weren't drones, because the public & authorities have already decided that's what they were. It's not going to do us any good at all to stick our heads where the sun don't shine and talk about 'proof' ... The families that spent last night trying to sleep in Gatwick terminal aren't going to love you for that!!!
You'd be better off thinking about what you are going to tell your friends and neighbours when they say to you "Oh - it was one of you lot that closed Gatwick!".

 

[Splashy]

Surely another drone would be ideal to use.
Either the drone follows the target or tries to bring it down by colliding with it. With a thermal camera it should not be too difficult to locate the target and descending into a drone would surely cause it to crash.

 

[Congoblue]

From BBC:

Brian Strutton, General Secretary of the British Airline Pilots' Association (BALPA) told the BBC:

"We have been working closely with the Department for Transport on these issues, and we were pleased to see new drone laws put in place earlier this year, but we said they do not go far enough. The Government was clear to BALPA that they were open to extending the 1km exclusion zone, and it is now obvious that must happen urgently. BALPA is calling for a 5km exclusion zone."

Well that's really going to help the situation isn't it.... a 5km exclusion zone would absolutely have prevented this happening... NOT

 

[ataraxia]

I can't understand why the authorities haven't yet sent up their own drone to follow these as they return home to recharge

 

[Tazbone]

With all the technology we have here in the UK you'd think we'd have a radar system that could actually spot said drones.
99 red balloons comes to mind.

 

[Splashy]

A radio controlled airship might explain how it manages to stay aloft for so long.

 

[Congoblue]

I can't understand why the authorities haven't yet sent up their own drone to follow these as they return home to recharge

It's obvious they can't find it/them. They have a number of reports of sightings at random intervals, some of which are probably spurious due to the high awareness level. I'm sure if there was a drone hovering over the end of the runway they'd have done something by now.

 

[choo choo]

I'm trying to be serious...no substantiated pictures, a vague light in the sky taken on a phone camera proves bugger all
where are all the long lens zoomed in shots?, Gatwick allways has a good few professional photographers and spotters hanging about

And we all know about the LochNess monster hoaxes. (Or Bigfoot if you are stateside) They went on for many years.

 

[ataraxia]

It's obvious they can't find it/them. They have a number of reports of sightings at random intervals, some of which are probably spurious due to the high awareness level. I'm sure if there was a drone hovering over the end of the runway they'd have done something by now.

But this has been going on since 21:00 last night, the police have had 20 units and a helicopter there since this morning, could they not have someone sat there with a drone/drones so that the moment there's a sighting they get in the air?

 

[zocalo]

I'm trying to be serious...no substantiated pictures, a vague light in the sky taken on a phone camera proves bugger all where are all the long lens zoomed in shots?, Gatwick allways has a good few professional photographers and spotters hanging about

That's a good point, surely some planespotter or press photographer with a telephoto lens ought to have caught a decent image by now and forwarded it onto the police and media, etc., despite the relatively small size of even a large drone. Yes, it's a tough target and a large target area, but there must be hundreds of cameras pointed at the skies around Gatwick by now.

I've not really been looking, but most of the images I've seen so far appear to be low-res ("black dot" in the sky) or composites where a drone has been pasted onto a generic image of Gatwick or an aircraft. Anyone have any link to a decent enough image that undeniably confirms it to be a drone yet, let alone its type/size?

 

[choo choo]

Asgard and Choo Choo remind me of Donald Trump - deny reality because it doesn't fit with my worldview

I lived near and played in the garden of the house which had the longest hoax in memory. Even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle said it was true.
It was the Cottingley Fairies photo.
Supposedly taken by two little girls, who, when the last one was elderly and near end of life, admitted that it was all a hoax. The fairies were cardboard cutouts. And yet thousands of people over 7 decades said that the photos were genuine, experts examined the photos and concluded they were genuine. The few dissenting voices were beaten down, dismissed just the same way because what they said was against the ‘establishment’.
Even now at 1415 in the afternoon it’s is being reported that there is still drone activity over the airport....where are the bloomin photos...there’s thousands of camera phones, news cameras, news helicopters flying overhead, but not one picture of a drone near the airport. Very strange.

 

[choo choo]

I'm trying to be serious...no substantiated pictures, a vague light in the sky taken on a phone camera proves bugger all
where are all the long lens zoomed in shots?, Gatwick allways has a good few professional photographers and spotters hanging about

True. The spotters will be there like flies round a corpse. A photo of a drone over the airport will be worth a fortune syndicated worldwide

 

[ataraxia]

Looks like the army are about to be called in

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[Congoblue]

But this has been going on since 21:00 last night, the police have had 20 units and a helicopter there since this morning, could they not have someone sat there with a drone/drones so that the moment there's a sighting they get in the air?

It's kinda big... You'd need to surround the entire site with drone operators to be in with a chance. I agree with the others that it is very odd nobody has managed to photograph anything.

 

[choo choo]

The airport will not be open until at least 1900hrs!!!! You can’t seriously tell me that someone can be flying a drone around the UKs third largest airport for nigh on 24hrs and not been neutralised by now.

 

[ataraxia]

It's kinda big... You'd need to surround the entire site with drone operators to be in with a chance. I agree with the others that it is very odd nobody has managed to photograph anything.

It is big, but if you're at one end of the airport and you get a sighting at the other end, I'm sure it wouldn't take a drone long to reach it whilst the initial witness has got eyes on and I'm also sure they can lay their hands on multiple drones. I've seen quite a few pilots now offer to get up there and take them out or follow them. The lack of photos is very odd, especially anywhere near London, it's crawling with cameras and surveillance.

 

[choo choo]

Looks like the army are about to be called in

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If this turns out to be Jupiter in the sky.....

 

[zocalo]

Well that's really going to help the situation isn't it.... a 5km exclusion zone would absolutely have prevented this happening... NOT

Quite. They are operating within a 1km exclusion zone already, so 5km isn't likely to have stopped them - this is clearly not a casual idiot, this is a deliberate attempt to disrupt Gatwick operations as much as possible for a currently unknown reason (political statement or Lulz doesn't really matter though). All a 5km zone does it create larger NFZs covering areas that would otherwise be perfectly safe to operate a drone in, e.g. to the sides of minor airfields (literally "fields"), and further reduce the locations where responsible pilots can fly.

It's not as bad in the UK as some countries, but even 5km around every major airport is going to add up to a LOT of real estate (download the NATS Drone Assist app and have a play with the distance info settings), and if you extend that 5km to every little field that someone might occassionally take off from in a microlight or something then you are running out of land where it's legal to fly awfully fast. I'm all for the more nuanced approach of DJI's current approach/depart vector NFZs (even including likely abort paths if need be), but a blanket 5km is going way too far, IMHO. If an fullsize aircraft is below 400ft 1.5km to the side of a single runway then they've almost certainly got *much* bigger things to worry about than a drone in the same airspace at the same time.

 

[Nukeboyt]

(T)he situation is scary far beyond the negative effect it will have on hobby and commercial drone fliers.

I agree with this statement 100%. Thanks for helping keep this in perspective.