Police admit that some drone sightings during Gatwick closure crisis may have been of their own surveillance drones

[MiniPalourde]

Police admit that some drone sightings during Gatwick closure crisis may have been of their own surveillance drones


"Last week Detective Chief Superintendent Jason Tingley said there was "always a possibility that there may not have been any genuine drone activity in the first place," because police relied on human witnesses to the sighting".

It's amateur hour, isn't it?

 

[Mrmund]

Or not at all...

UK police bizarrely saying Gatwick shutdown might not have been drones reportedly a failure to communicate

 

[JDawg]

Or not at all...

UK police bizarrely saying Gatwick shutdown might not have been drones reportedly a failure to communicate

5 day old article. Also from the article -
"Tingley said on Sunday that police received 67 reports of drone sightings between December 19 and 21 from the public, passengers, police officers, and airport staff, according to The Guardian. "

 

[DougBlueSkies]

Please correct me if I’m wrong , but my understanding is, there has not been one photograph. Not one picture... tens of thousands of passengers with smartphones within the airport, and the numerous media and rubber necker’s parading the perimeter and not one shot of a drone flying over Gatwick airport.
As a taxpayer footing the bill for this debacle I am wholly unsatisfied with the official line (if you can call it that) on this incident and disgusted at the waste of money and resource. As a CAA registered multi rotor pilot I’m less than impressed with the lack of proper knowledge reported by our dreadfully lacking media parroting anything and everything anyone from Gatwick airport or a government office had to say on the matter.
No questions, just official statements.
Either we have not been told the truth, or the UK Gov, CAA and Airport authorities are all woefully and embarrassingly unprepared and startlingly inept at keeping our airports safe.
I do hope this incident is not allowed to ‘evaporate’ into the misty memory chronicles, where incidents like these affect our freedom for generations but are never publicly resolved.
As individuals the transparency we demand from government must not be watered down by the collective ideal that government knows best. It does not know best. It is but made from the individual and must be answerable to the same. Not the reverse.
All the best and fly safe

 

[Watash48]

Please correct me if I’m wrong , but my understanding is, there has not been one photograph. Not one picture... tens of thousands of passengers with smartphones within the airport, and the numerous media and rubber necker’s parading the perimeter and not one shot of a drone flying over Gatwick airport.
As a taxpayer footing the bill for this debacle I’m am wholly unsatisfied with the official line (if you can call it that) on this incident and disgusted at the waste of money and resource. As a CAA registered multi rotor pilot I’m less than impressed with the lack of proper knowledge reported by our dreadfully lacking media parroting anything and everything anyone from Gatwick airport or a government office had to say on the matter.
No questions, just official statements.
Either we have not been told the truth, or the UK Gov, CAA and Airport authorities are all woefully and embarrassingly unprepared and startlingly inept at keeping our airports safe.
I do hope this incident is not allowed to ‘evaporate’ into the misty memory chronicles, where incidents like these affect our freedom for generations but are never publicly resolved.
As individuals the transparency we demand from government must not be watered down by the collective ideal that government knows best. It does not know best. It is but made from the individual and must be answerable to the same. Not the reverse.
All the best and fly safe

Perhaps it’s an effort to outlaw drones?

 

[Big buzzer]

Great way to sow public demand for tougher drone regs.

 

[Aaron24]

The while episode is one big farce. There never was a drone. This started out as a small little problem then manifested into this massive big ordeal. There should be a major investigation into this and some key learnings taken from the outcomes.

 

[Mr. Salty]

Here's the existing lengthy thread discussing this incident: Gatwick incident thread .Please resume in this one .
Gatwick incident thread .Please resume in this one .

Or this one: More about Gatwick Airport Terrorists
More about Gatwick Airport Terrorists

 

[DougBlueSkies]

Here's the existing lengthy thread discussing this incident: Gatwick incident thread .Please resume in this one .
Gatwick incident thread .Please resume in this one .

Or this one: More about Gatwick Airport Terrorists
More about Gatwick Airport Terrorists

I’m not sure that’s a good idea, this thread has solely pursued the ‘theory’that there may not have been a drone. Would be such a shame for such an important piece of this puzzle to be lost in the miriad of ideas in the other threads. Let’s keep this one strictly to discuss the possibility that there may not have been a ‘rogue’ drone/s present at all

 

[JDawg]

I’m not sure that’s a good idea, this thread has solely pursued the ‘theory’that there may not have been a drone. Would be such a shame for such an important piece of this puzzle to be lost in the miriad of ideas in the other threads. Let’s keep this one strictly to discuss the possibility that there may not have been a ‘rogue’ drone/s present at all

NO

 

[Mr. Salty]

I’m not sure that’s a good idea, this thread has solely pursued the ‘theory’that there may not have been a drone. Would be such a shame for such an important piece of this puzzle to be lost in the miriad of ideas in the other threads. Let’s keep this one strictly to discuss the possibility that there may not have been a ‘rogue’ drone/s present at all

Those threads are discussing the possibility there was no drone, in depth, for days. There's really no need for an endless string of Gatwick threads.

 

[ataraxia]

Yet again, statements from the police are being deliberately confused by the media and forums like this one. They have made two statements:

1) There is a chance that there was no drone - well yes, obviously. They have said this purely because of the lack of concrete evidence that there was one. It's a sensible thing to say, because it's a slight possibility, it means they are keeping an open mind judging by the evidence they have in front of them. However, it's been portrayed as "we don't know if there's a drone or not and therefore we don't know what we're doing".

2) Some drone sightings may have been police drones - again, no duh. There was a flurry of calls made by the public regarding drone sightings. Public at the airport were not being told exactly what the police were doing, therefore didn't know they were using their own drones, therefore reported drone activity that they didn't realise was planned by authorities.

So, we create headline number 3 by adding 1 and 2 together - "there was no rogue drone, it was a police drone and we didn't know it was us becuz we be stoopid doody heads". Why do people not realise that the media is stirring up this crap, so that journalists can sell more news papers and web sites can get more hits and therefore more money from advertisers. I think the police have handled this poorly but that's down to lack of education which is completely down to the CAA and Government ministers who introduced the new drone laws.

 

[4wd]

How is it lack of education, the media/police/airport stated it was deliberate flouting to cause disruption.

Besides, every BBC drone-danger-menace story gives helpful links to drone rules, even when a drone is only incidental like the latest - when someone free-climbed a bridge and had a drone - so it was interpreted as drone-danger-menace closing a bridge, not risk of falling person closing a bridge.

 

[ataraxia]

How is it lack of education, the media/police/airport stated it was deliberate flouting to cause disruption.

The lack of education from the CAA to the regular police on how drones operate and, more importantly, which measures can be taken to bring a rogue one down. At the start of this incident it was very obvious that the police didn't have a clue how to handle it. It was only when the army were called in and anti-drone systems arrived on site that they started getting an idea of how to combat it, why do you think the police keep saying "we've learnt a lot from this incident"?

I know that the force that covers my area doesn't know anything about drones or how to combat them, neither do the public, that's why drone pilots are usually bombarded with questions (good and bad) when they operate somewhere. Fortunately everybody who has approached me so far has been friendly and taken a genuine interest in what I'm doing and how my drone works, but either way it's obvious that there is a serious lack of knowledge of drones outside the drone community. The most common question I've had so far has been "aren't they illegal?", which gives an idea of what non-pilots currently know.

 

[Asgard]

It's not the job of the CAA to educate the police, it is the police's responsibility to be equipped with the knowledge to respond to unlawfull acts, but tbh the current UK police force is a more a police farce and I don't say that just because of this event, the UK police are not fit for purpose (to put it politely)

 

[ataraxia]

It's not the job of the CAA to educate the police, it is the police's responsibility to be equipped with the knowledge to respond to unlawfull acts, but tbh the current UK police force is a more a police farce and I don't say that just because of this event, the UK police are not fit for purpose (to put it politely)

UK police are severely underfunded to the point of it being a crisis, though it's not being reported in the media as such of course. The only stories that make it to the front page are when the police have screwed something up, which is more often than not because of a lack of resources and time to be able to dedicate to any one thing. We have gone from over 140,000 officers in 2010 to just under 120,000 currently, that's a loss of over 21,000 police officers in just 8 years, you can't just lose that many people and not expect the remaining service to run like a bag of ****. It's very easy to just say the police are rubbish at their job, but they are just as frustrated about this as the public are (if not more so).

 

[Asgard]

I'm talking from personal experience matey, underfunded is true, that doesn't change the fact they are not up to the job.
Nothing to do with the media reporting

 

[ataraxia]

I am also talking from personal experience and I've seen the chaos in various police departments, mainly due to under-staffing. Obviously we are speculating but I would imagine that with a very stretched police service they aren't able to invest time in new technology (and accompanying education and training) such as anti-drone devices, especially as up until now there have been no significant drone incidents. From what I've seen the police are working too reactive instead of preventive, purely because they can't keep up with demand.

I can't help but feel the CAA, who know everything there is to know about drones, have pushed through a change in the law which a clueless police service don't know how to enforce. Surely they could have helped pass on just a little knowledge at least. And the airport too, why hadn't they put in their own measures beforehand? There have been other incidents where drones have been confirmed operating in commercial airspace and have grounded flights, it wouldn't take a genius to figure out that one could cause the severe disruption that we saw at Gatwick.

 

[hoggdoc]

Perhaps it’s an effort to outlaw drones?

Ya think?

 

[hoggdoc]

The while episode is one big farce. There never was a drone. This started out as a small little problem then manifested into this massive big ordeal. There should be a major investigation into this and some key learnings taken from the outcomes.

Why hasn't the person or person's falsely reporting the "sighting" been arrested and harassed like the couple featured so prominently in the news? Answer that would sell newspapers or increase the rating for your news casts.

The fact remains that there has been NO loss of life or serious damage to any aircraft worldwide from a collision with a "DRONE" while general aviation and commercial air operations continues to have loss of life and property damage, seems pretty stupid doesn't it. At the same time millions of hobbyists worldwide are having their rights to pursue their hobby seriously restricted.