With just a week to go before Christmas, he might have been hoping for a quick getaway at the end of a long shift. That was when the airport security officer first noticed the drones: two cross-shaped objects with flashing lights, buzzing around in the sky.
In most places, this might be a mild curiosity; but on the airfield at London Gatwick, the second-busiest airport in the UK, it was the cause of days of chaos. As more than fifty drone sightings were reported over the next few days, flights were unable to take off for thirty-six hours. Hundreds of thousands of passengers were affected, facing delays that ran into days and forcing holiday cancellations.
The estimated cost to airlines, the airport, and passengers is likely to run into tens of millions of pounds. As I write this, no one knows who was behind what appears to be a coordinated attack, or even how many drones were involved. Another, more recent sighting of drones at London’s biggest airport, Heathrow, suggests that the perpetrators may still be at large—or they may have inspired copycats.
The overwhelming sentiments from those affected and from the public were incredulity and fear. Drones have been around for a while: the first commercial drone permits were issued in 2006. By 2016, over 2.4 million personal drones were sold in the US. This was hardly some unforeseeable use of rare, futuristic technology to wreak havoc; one of the passengers caught up in the mayhem had to swallow the bitter irony of an advertisement for drones on his plane ticket.
How was it possible that the UK appeared to have no countermeasures? How could it be that one of the world’s busiest airports could be brought to its knees by, quite possibly, one person using a toy that you can buy online? And, now that the precedent has been set, how many more airports would be targeted?
To read more, click here.