Gatwick airport reopens after drone sow chaos

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LONDON: London’s Gatwick Airport reopened yesterday after a drone saboteur wrought travel chaos for hundreds of thousands of Christmas travellers 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.

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.

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.

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Gatwick’s chief operating officer Chris Woodroofe said the perpetrator had not been found, but that additional security measures had given him the confidence to reopen the airport.

Flights were halted at 2103 GMT on Wednesday after two drones were spotted near the airfield. The disruption affected 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. –Reuters

 

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