Gatwick incident thread .Please resume in this one .

[sar104]

The farce continues.

The latest statement hardly clears anything up.
They found two crashed drones which have been ruled out (read been rotting in vegetation for weeks)
Over a hundred 'sightings' but then it's implied the police used drones which likely account for many of those.

My best guess is there was a temporary system failure with traffic control at what is one of the busiest periods of the year.

To minimise compensation damages they have decided to go with a possible drone sighting to account for a short closure. Only they couldn't resolve the issue and the lie needed to grow and grow.

The very idea of drones repeatedly taunting the airport for many hours, but being all but impossible to catch on camera or follow back to base for battery swap is frankly ludicrous.

How many people do you think would be aware of an ATC system failure at a major airport, and therefore knew about this conspiracy? It would be dozens - probably hundreds. Remarkable that not one of them leaked that, don't you think?

 

[FoxhallGH]

The very idea of drones repeatedly taunting the airport for many hours, but being all but impossible to catch on camera or follow back to base for battery swap is frankly ludicrous.

It's only ludicrous if you use the benefit of 20-20 hind-sight ... It's easy to say that this and that should have been done, but the reality for those on the ground at the time was that there was a drone reported as being within the airport boundary ... Now - perhaps Gatwick Airport Security should have consulted their crystal ball and foreseen the extended nature of the 'incursion' and called up the Army and the specialist anti-drone companies immediately! But we now know that there are roughly two drone incursions into UK airport NFZ's per day on average. With that in mind - put yourself in the shoes of the Security staff ... Would you have immediately called up the Police, Army, etc. - or just seen it as 'ANOTHER drone incident' that meant you had to go through a process to ensure the drone had cleared the airspace and you could re-open the Airport.
Also - put yourself in the shoes of the Police, Army, etc. - If they had been called up on the first incident, they too would have quoted stat's about how many drone sightings there were at airports each day - and told Airport Security to ... go away! ...

The question here is really "How many drone incursions to restricted [airport] airspace need to occur, over what period, for it to be considered an attack!"

And once again - if you look at how an airport's operations are focused on the health & safety of the staff and public using it - you'll note that it doesn't need for a drone to hover for many hours to cause many hours of disruption ... A low-level pass across the runway and out the other side of the boundary fence would be enough to stop things happening for a couple of hours - simply because - at the time, you just don't know if the drone's coming back!

 

[Starky]

Thing is Foxy, when you come across all know it all on a subject and put down those with different views, it would help if when it turns out the others were probably more clued up than you, if you showed some humility.

But nope, you go straight back to picking holes.
FFS Get a life

 

[FoxhallGH]

Thing is Foxy, when you come across all know it all on a subject and put down those with different views, it would help if when it turns out the others were probably more clued up than you, if you showed some humility.

But nope, you go straight back to picking holes.
FFS Get a life

Sorry @Starkey - probably comes from being trained as an Air-side Engineering Tech' for the Civil Aviation Authority - that does tend to give one a couple of clues as to how an Airport works! I'm not putting down anybody with different views (just offering alternate views as you are) - all I'm saying is that there are valid explanations for what went on and what was reported ... And maybe [with hindsight] the whole sorry thing wasn't handled very well, at multiple levels ... But at the end of the day, we are seeing a trend on this Forum that's more about saying "the reports were wrong!" - than accepting that even if there was no drone (and there's enough evidence that there was), the potential for the lasting legacy of all this c**p, is that you and I will need to find a new hobby ...
Go on - complain all you want that there's no evidence of drones, that there's some conspiracy, that some Anti-drone company wanted to make a killing selling to UK airports ... But what is that going to do for us and our hobby / profession at the end of the day ... Nothing - it just makes it look like we are a community with its collective head up its a**e!

"it would help if when it turns out the others were probably more clued up than you, if you showed some humility." - More than prepared to @Starky - but as yet, I've not seen any proof that this is the case.

 

[Pietros]

The drones the police used at Gatwick were the Aeryon SkyRangers and cost $82,541.84 / £65,000 each which makes them a little bit more expensive than our drones cost, interesting they are only four rotor blade dron, I quite expect some of the drone sightings over Gatwick were in fact these ones.

Just looked up the specs and now I want one.
SkyRanger R60 | Aeryon

 

[Darko]

What surprises me most, is the willingness of so many people (even some of the 'experts' in here) to swallow the absurd rubbish coming from the media circus so willingly.

 

[FoxhallGH]

What surprises me most, is the willingness of so many people (even some of the 'experts' in here) to swallow the absurd rubbish coming from the media circus so willingly.

Like all reported 'events' you get 'time-line facts' [what/when it happened] - followed by 'conjecture' [why/how it happened] ... The why and how always comes later of course, and lots of things will determine how much later. In the absence of concrete why/how information, you'll see a range of theories put forward, with justification for every one of them.
This is an example of the basic timeline ...
Timeline: How the drone chaos at Gatwick Airport unfolded - Independent.ie
Those are the basic facts ...
There are very clever people involved in finding out 'why' & 'how' ... I'm keenly awaiting their conclusions ...

 

[sergekouper]

Why would they release photos? Its potential evidence therefore doing so could easily affect that. And if its deemed not to be related why would they release photos of someone elses lost and damaged property that isnt connected to any active case?

The police are there to do a job and not spoon feed people "demanding" on internet forums.

Its been a few short days. It takes a LOT longer than that to forensically exam any potential crime scene object, even more for something technical with data storage requiring expertise and a huge trail of paperwork to make any potential evidence from it legally admissible.

And police arrest and release people all the time without charges. Its how the law works. They investigate, they question people, they evaluate evidence then decide whether to charge. They don't have to, will not and nor should they have to justify the thousands of times that happens on a daily basis to demanding internet users.

At best they have been incompetents, raiding and ruining Christmas (and probably doing more damage) to this innocent couple who don't even own a drone! Not a picture, not any beginning of evidence. And as far as I know no apologies of course. Bunch of cowboys.

 

[FoxhallGH]

Remember that it's not the Police who are writing the articles for the newspapers and TV ... and investigations are on-going. Apologies have been made by the Police and we are yet to hear the full story!

 

[JDawg]

Someone should start a poll, do you believe someone, multiple times, flew over the airport over a 24 hour period. I am starting to lean towards this may have been something other that what we thought.

 

[ataraxia]

What surprises me most, is the willingness of so many people (even some of the 'experts' in here) to swallow the absurd rubbish coming from the media circus so willingly.

It's one of those things where you don't realise exactly how much crap the media comes out with until they start reporting on something you know about

 

[gnirtS]

Not a picture, not any beginning of evidence.

We don't know what evidence they do or don't have - you don't release evidence to the public domain from an onhoing criminal investigation.

And as far as I know no apologies of course. Bunch of cowboys.

There were multiple apologies from various people. Not sure how you missed that as every single media outlet covered it.

 

[zocalo]

We don't know what evidence they do or don't have - you don't release evidence to the public domain from an onhoing criminal investigation.

From the latest BBC article:

Sussex Police, which is still investigating the disruption, says it was caused by "numerous instances of illegal drone activity".

The force said it has "relevant sightings" from 115 witnesses - 93 of whom it described as "credible" - including airport staff, police officers and a pilot.

Still only saying "sightings" rather than something more specific that confirms images, so either they are being coy or no one managed to capture the drone on camera, but they do now seem quite sure that there were multiple drone flights so presumably some of those credible witnesses' reports were deemed accurate. There was also at least one drone flight reported after they deployed the anti-drone tech, so if they captured it on that then that ought to be sufficient proof as to whether there were flights or not. Also kind of understandable they might not want to release that info to the media given some sections of it named and shamed two suspects who turned out to innocent and mocked the police for their mixed messages, especially the "possiblility there was no drone" thing.

 

[gnirtS]

Police have admitted some of the drone sightings (and the ones after deployment) may well have been their drones.

 

[zocalo]

Police have admitted some of the drone sightings (and the ones after deployment) may well have been their drones.

Yes, old news. The latest comments do now confirm *illegal* drone activity, which presumably means they've eliminated sightings of their own drones from amongst the various sightings based on the time and location of the reports and comparison with GPS logs from their own drone flights. Those logs should also enable a quick verification of any drones tracked via the Drone Dome system (and anything else the military might brought into play) to see if they were one of the police drones or not.

That said, I do think we're only dealing with a handful of actual illegal flights and quite possibly some of the airport shutdowns were due to false alarms. AFAICT from the media reports (with all the reliability issues that entails) there seem to have been two "sightings" on the first night, then between three and six further "sightings" that either prompted LGW to shutdown or occurred during a shutdown. Exactly how many of those sightings actually involved an illegally operated drone is definitely open to discussion though.

 

[gnirtS]

They dont really prove *illegal*, merely one might have been in there area (1km is legal and still very very close).

This whole thing could easily have been just one drone flight (real or imaginary) and then just mass hysteria after that.

Even "credible witnesses" get things wrong a lot of the time in general as the police are fully aware with any crime investigation. Airline pilots are often classed as credible witnesses when they see "drones" passing by at 18,000ft+.

 

[zocalo]

They dont really prove *illegal*, merely one might have been in there area (1km is legal and still very very close).

This whole thing could easily have been just one drone flight (real or imaginary) and then just mass hysteria after that.

Even "credible witnesses" get things wrong a lot of the time in general as the police are fully aware with any crime investigation. Airline pilots are often classed as credible witnesses when they see "drones" passing by at 18,000ft+.

Definitely, but it's still a shift on what they what the police were saying only a few days ago so it does seem like they might have something they believe to carry a little more weight than mere hearsay, which is all even a credible witness can provide without futher evidence. After the previous "miscommunications" I think they're going to be choosing their words much more carefully going forwards, so if they're saying "illegal drone activity" then I'm going to assume they can back that up - note that they're not (yet) stating how many flights there were though, although the implication from the plural would be at least two.

How much is hysteria or genuine error vs. actual drones though is anyone's guess, and unless they have verifiable photos or (maybe) tracks on Drone Dome/whatever that have not been shared with the media, I doubt anyone is ever going to be able to state for a fact which reports, if any, were genuine unless they somehow manage to retrieve drone(s) with GPS logs still onboard, which is starting to look increasingly unlikely given the lack of any more recent flights.

 

[sergekouper]

We don't know what evidence they do or don't have - you don't release evidence to the public domain from an onhoing criminal investigation.



There were multiple apologies from various people. Not sure how you missed that as every single media outlet covered it.

What I read from the police statement was that they were sorry they felt violated. This is not an apology at all. Maybe you can't see the difference but it is quite clear. And as I said there is still no beginning of evidence. The only evidence here is the gross incompetency of the police. like it or not.

 

[FoxhallGH]

What I read from the police statement was that they were sorry they felt violated. This is not an apology at all. Maybe you can't see the difference but it is quite clear. And as I said there is still no beginning of evidence. The only evidence here is the gross incompetency of the police. like it or not.

The Police also say that they had reasonable cause to make the arrest in the first place - so - somebody with a vindictive streak, and something against Paul Gait - must have called up the Police and shopped him! We've not heard anything - even an apology - from those who made him a suspect in the first place!!

 

[sergekouper]

The Police also say that they had reasonable cause to make the arrest in the first place - so - somebody with a vindictive streak, and something against Paul Gait - must have called up the Police and shopped him! We've not heard anything - even an apology - from those who made him a suspect in the first place!!

It would be really interesting to know how this happened, was it an anonymous call? getting a sort of explanation from the police would help to understand how they came to raid this house and arrest people not even owning a drone, locked them for 36hours, and release them "satisfied they were no longer suspects". That would certainly help to improve their damaged professional image. There is only 1 word coming to me when I look at this fiasco: Incompetency. At some point you have to open your eyes and stop justifying their mistakes.