Gatwick Airport (UK) suspends flights due to Drone activity

[Tazbone]

Neither can a chinese lantern. Drone sightings were reported from 2100 last night and it was still over the airport at 0900 this morning. Either lots of people with multiple drones working as a team or some sightings are mistaken.



This is the same in the UK for DJI drones, but it is not that hard to make one yourself which has no restrictions.

There will be folk out there that will play outside the box,like in all walks of life you'll never stop everything but you can decrease the percentage of law breakers with a decent and fair rule.

 

[Congoblue]

Someone with sense quoted on the BBC website:

The Chief Operating Officer of Gatwick has said the drones are of an industrial size, so we appear not to be talking about the drones you can buy from the shops. Obviously there will be all sorts of speculation, but given the timing involved and the time period over which the drones have been present, there must be a strong suspicion this is a very deliberate act.

The scale of the chaos will lead to calls for fresh restrictions on drones no doubt, but it has to be asked if this was a planned operation then would such restrictions be effective in preventing a repeat. Only seven people have been prosecuted in five years for drone offences unrelated to prison use, which highlights the challenges for the police to be able to deal with drone mis-use like this.
It is very likely that electronic solutions such as the one used to protect Les Nicolles prison on Guernsey from drone incursions will be introduced rapidly.

Dr Alan McKenna University of Kent

 

[Tazbone]

Someone with sense quoted on the BBC website:

The Chief Operating Officer of Gatwick has said the drones are of an industrial size, so we appear not to be talking about the drones you can buy from the shops. Obviously there will be all sorts of speculation, but given the timing involved and the time period over which the drones have been present, there must be a strong suspicion this is a very deliberate act.

The scale of the chaos will lead to calls for fresh restrictions on drones no doubt, but it has to be asked if this was a planned operation then would such restrictions be effective in preventing a repeat. Only seven people have been prosecuted in five years for drone offences unrelated to prison use, which highlights the challenges for the police to be able to deal with drone mis-use like this.
It is very likely that electronic solutions such as the one used to protect Les Nicolles prison on Guernsey from drone incursions will be introduced rapidly.

Dr Alan McKenna University of Kent

That same corporation has just aired a fella stating drones have crashed twice.A plane in Canada and into a rudder of a helicopter in the states....whilst also airing video footage of a military style guy using the Droneshield gun.
Right now the house of Lords are discussing this issue and wanting laws to be implemented TODAY.

 

[Aww@Mavic]

I was just going to post that topic. What moron will fly a drone causing this negative press
Gatwick chaos as drones causes runway to close - live updates

 

[Aww@Mavic]

I was just going to post that topic. What moron will fly a drone causing this negative press
Gatwick chaos as drones causes runway to close - live updates

I'll now read the post. Grrrr

 

[zocalo]

According to the BBC's coverage the Chief Operating Officer of Gatwick has said the drones are of an industrial size, so we appear not to be talking about the drones you can buy from the shops.

I guess that could include something like off the shelf Matrice style drones but I don't think we're talking Quads here. The duration also indicates a deliberate disruption attempt to me, but if you wanted to make an environmental statement then why Gatwick and not Heathrow?

A lot of the comments from people involved are also saying more legislation won't really help and technical means like electronically enforced NFZs are required. Because that's going to work with home built RC aircraft and won't lead to a slipperly slope of ever extending NFZs that goes far beyond the sensible stuff like airports, prisons, and so on...

 

[InvisibleName]

Home made drone made illegal.
2nd hand drones again need to be registered.
When you sell a car... You inform the DVLA with the details of the new owner.
Same procedure.

Easy to say, nearly impossible to impose!

 

[The Fat Controller]

Perhaps it was Theresa May? There's not much about Brexit in the news today.

 

[BlueBay]

I'm surprised that airports are not better protected against this type of violation. Surely we have radar or other military technology that can discover drones, much like missiles.

Hopefully, the drone operator was foolish enough to fly with active GPS data. They can definitely track the data with military grade agency utilities.

Considering the level of disruption and the cumulative cost associated with this incident, they won't hold back. The operator will be found eventually.

Some reports are suggesting that commercial grade large drones were used.

No doubt this will yet again influence the public perception of drones within the UK and diminish the good progress that responsible pilots and organisations have made in recent times.

Airports need their own technology to prevent this type of incident in the future, they should not rely on the drone software.

 

[Aww@Mavic]

You could potentially flood the relevant frequencies with noise, but that's going to mean fly-aways and them dropping out of the sky in an uncontrolled manner. It's also going to play havoc with other things that use those frequency bands, some of which might have safety implications. OK if you don't care about the collateral damage - e.g. a warzone - not, really suitable for an urban area.

As others have said, I hope these idiots get caught and fined/jailed to the maximum extent of the law, but I suspect the damage is done. We can almost certainly expect legislation with even more limitations on where we can and can't fly to be introduced next year, and some form of mandatory registration/tracking seems like just a matter of time.

The Tech already exists to locate an offending drone and take full control.
I read about US contractors last year writing code to achieve this with the Mavic. They sell to the military and law enforcement

 

[Congoblue]

This gets ever more strange... BBC says (at 12:00 GMT)

-There has been another drone sighting near Gatwick Airport in the last hour, says Gatwick chief operating officer Chris Woodroofe.

-He said this was seen by Sussex Police.

-Mr Woodroofe added: "I cannot tell you what time we will reopen."

-"I am not prepared to reopen the airport until it is safe to do so."


So these "drones" have now been flying for 18 hours... but nobody has managed to do anything about it yet???

 

[AnotherMavicPilot]

I was going to mention the fact that, most parts of the UK yesterday and even today are experiencing heavy rain and winds.

Not many drones out there, that can withstand that...

Ok, maybe this:

 

[zocalo]

The Tech already exists to locate an offending drone and take full control.
I read about US contractors last year writing code to achieve this with the Mavic. They sell to the military and law enforcement

Yeah, for a COTS drone, and quite specific models at that. There are a LOT of manufacturers, and I suspect very few use the same protocols, etc., all of which would need to be backdoored. DJI's protocols are fairly open, as such things go, to enable apps like Litchi. Other smaller vendors, perhaps not so much.

A government could even legislate that this kind of backdoor was mandatory and standardised for any RC aircraft sold within their jurisdiction, amongst other measures. The problem gets a little more challenging in the general case, as might be the situation here, when the aircraft is potentially hand built. That means non-standard protocols, and potentially non-standard (possibly even illegal) use of radio frequencies.

I doubt very much there is a single universal solution here, other than some kind of weapon system that's able to successfully target and track a drone in flight.

 

[zocalo]

So these "drones" have now been flying for 18 hours... but nobody has managed to do anything about it yet???

I get the impression there are multiple drones and they are not flying continually, with quite long periods where they are not in the air. I'd guess those responsible have a stack of batteries and are cycling them through a charging bank to maximise flight time, but there are still periods where they are without a charged battery.

On the legislation side:

"Baroness Sugg says from next November those who have a drone will have to register it and take a safety test."

 

[FoxhallGH]

I get the impression there are multiple drones and they are not flying continually, with quite long periods where they are not in the air. I'd guess those responsible have a stack of batteries and are cycling them through a charging bank to maximise flight time, but there are still periods where they are without a charged battery.

On the legislation side:

"Baroness Sugg says from next November those who have a drone will have to register it and take a safety test."

Does look like a concerted effort by a group. Maybe the Police will get the idea soon that they just need to track the drones back to where the battery supply is?
Baroness Sugg is just saying the obvious that we all knew about - that's not news at all.

 

[InvisibleName]

On the legislation side:

"Baroness Sugg says from next November those who have a drone will have to register it and take a safety test."

We already know this......

 

[Heidelburger]

Regardless of the validity of this story, the truth is, it is very bad for the 90% (i'm an optimist!) responsible pilots in our community. The only way we might come out of this unscathed is if the drone users themselves were able to succeed where the authorities appear to be failing. In other words, if through these forums and message boards we could do anything leading to the identification and capture of these neanderthals, then we could spin this around. Any thoughts?

 

[pross]

No amount of rules, fines or tests will stop people like this. How many of the little ****wits on mopeds have licenses or insurance?

 

[zocalo]

Does look like a concerted effort by a group. Maybe the Police will get the idea soon that they just need to track the drones back to where the battery supply is?

Seems to be an organized effort, so they could quite easily be operating from the back of a vehicle (or vehicles) and re-charging from the vehicle battery. Assuming DIY aircraft and not just a large COTS aircraft that could possibly be tracked back to an owner, then I agree that shooting them down might not be the best idea and you need to find the pilots. Firstly, you'd have no way have being sure you'd down all of them - "more than one" or "multiple" seems to be the only counts so far - and the perps would just drive/walk away. Disruption to travellers aside they *need* people in cuffs and the aircraft in evidence.

Baroness Sugg is just saying the obvious that we all knew about - that's not news at all.

Just throwing in out there for those not from the UK who might not be aware as a few such posters have mentioned "potential legislation" that's already in the works.

 

[ataraxia]

Regardless of the validity of this story, the truth is, it is very bad for the 90% (i'm an optimist!) responsible pilots in our community. The only way we might come out of this unscathed is if the drone users themselves were able to succeed where the authorities appear to be failing. In other words, if through these forums and message boards we could do anything leading to the identification and capture of these neanderthals, then we could spin this around. Any thoughts?

My thoughts at the moment are this is clearly a planned and co-ordinated incident rather than previous cases where it's a hobbyist being dumb. One thing that we could offer is to fly one of our drones up there and either follow them home or take them down. Somebody has already contacted Sussex police on Twitter and offered their racing drone to outmaneuver and take out the offenders.