London’s Gatwick Airport reopens after drone saboteur sows 36 hours of travel chaos

LONDON: London’s Gatwick Airport reopened yesterday after a saboteur wrought 36 hours of travel chaos for over a hundred thousand Christmas travellers by using a drone to play cat-andmouse 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 700 planes were due to take off yesterday, although there would still be delays and cancellations.

Britain deployed unidentified military technology to guard the airport against what Transport Secretary Chris Grayling said were thought to be several drones.

“What’s happening on the ground is a mix of measures taken to give confidence that aircraft can be safe ... Some of those are military capabilities,” Grayling told BBC television.

Grayling said there was not yet ‘a straightforward commercial, off- the- shelf solution that automatically solves all problems’.

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 was a terrorist attack.

Gatwick’s drone nightmare is thought to be the most disruptive yet at a major airport and indicates a new vulnerability that will be scrutinised by security forces and airport operators across the world.

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 reopen on Thursday.

Gatwick’s chief operating officer Chris Woodroofe said the perpetrator had not yet been found.

Flights were halted at 2103 GMT on Wednesday after two drones were spotted near the airfield.

The disruption affected at least 120,000 people.

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 1 km of a British airport boundary is punishable by five years in prison.

The drone sightings caused misery for tens of thousands of travellers who were stranded at Gatwick, many sleeping on the floor as they searched for alternative routes to holidays and Christmas family gatherings.