London — London's Gatwick Airport re-opened on Friday after a drone saboteur wrought travel chaos for hundreds of thousands of Christmas travelers by flying drones overhead, playing cat-and-mouse with police snipers and the army.
After the biggest disruption at Gatwick, Britain’s second busiest airport, since a volcanic ash cloud in 2010, Gatwick said its runway was open and that 700 planes were due to take off on Friday, although there would still be delays and cancellations.
“Gatwick’s runway is currently available and a limited number of aircraft are scheduled for departure and arrival,” the airport said.
Flights were halted at 21.03pm GMT on Wednesday after two drones were spotted near the airfield. The disruption affected 120,000 people.
The army and police snipers were called in to hunt down the drones, thought to be industrial style craft, which flew near the airport every time it tried to re-open on Thursday.
There was mystery over the motivation of the drone operator, or operators, and police said there was nothing to suggest the crippling of one of Europe’s busiest airports for 36 hours was a terrorist attack.
Gatwick’s COO Chris Woodroofe said the perpetrator had not been found, but that additional security measures had given him the confidence to re-open the airport.
After a boom in drone sales, unmanned aerial vehicles have become a growing menace at airports across the world. In Britain, the number of near misses between private drones and aircraft more than tripled between 2015 and 2017, with 92 incidents recorded last year. Flying drones within 1km of a British airport boundary is punishable by five years in prison.
Travel chaos
The drone sightings caused misery for tens of thousands of travelers who were stranded at Gatwick, many sleeping on the floor as they searched for alternative routes to holidays and Christmas family gatherings.
UK transport minister Chris Grayling lifted night-flying restrictions at other airports to ease congestion caused by diverted aircraft.
Police detective chief superintendent Jason Tingley said that “our assessment, based on the information we have available to us, is that this incident is not terrorism-related”.
Richard Parker, head of the air traffic management technology firm Altitude Angel, said this was the first time a major airport had been hit by such a sustained and deliberate incursion into its airspace.
“It’s sophisticated — not from a technology side, but it’s organised. People have charged lots of batteries and are deliberately trying to avoid being caught, probably by driving around to different locations,” he told Reuters. “It really is unprecedented.”
Reuters
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