Gwyn Topham and Frances Perraudin – The Guardian
Passengers faced further disruption at Gatwick airport on Friday evening after another sighting of a drone led to planes again being grounded for a brief period.
Runway operations were halted at 5.10pm after a report of a drone, but were restarted just over an hour later.
A spokeswoman said the airport had reopened after operators were reassured that military measures now in place meant it was safe to fly despite a confirmed sighting of a drone.
Gatwick had initially reopened on Friday morning following almost 36 hours of closure after multiple drone sightings around the UK’s second biggest airport. Police said they were investigating “persons of interest” in their efforts to identify who had been operating the drone or drones.
About 160 of 837 scheduled flights were cancelled, but the majority of the 126,000 passengers booked to fly from the airport got away as planned, albeit with slight delays, after the runway reopened just before 6am.
Until Friday afternoon, there had been no recurrence of the drone sightings that had put the runway out of action, whether or not as a result of the appearance of police and military with detection and jamming equipment at the airport.
The airport had said the “additional mitigating measures” put in place by the security services were allowing planes to fly again. A first arrival from China landed at about 6am and the first departure, a Norwegian Air flight to Lapland, took off soon after.
Sussex police said they were pursuing several significant lines of inquiry and that an environmental protest was a possibility. They were not linking the drone or drones to terrorism, they said.
Assistant chief constable Steve Barry said police were working on the theory that there was more than one drone. “In terms of motivation, there is a whole spectrum of possibilities, from the really high-end criminal behaviour all the way down to just individuals trying to be malicious,” he said.
Speaking outside Gatwick, he said measures to tackle the threat included “technical, sophisticated options to detect and mitigate drone incursions, all the way down to less sophisticated options – even shotguns would be available to officers should the opportunity present itself”.
Police and government would not confirm the equipment being used, but photos from Gatwick suggested military-grade drone tracking and signal jamming machines had been brought in.
The British Airline Pilots’ Association (Balpa) said it understood detection and tracking equipment had been installed around the airport perimeter, but the union remained concerned about the risks. Brian Strutton, Balpa’s general secretary, said: “It is up to the relevant authorities to decide whether it is safe to reopen Gatwick given that the rogue drone is still around and may be expected to fly again.
“We remain extremely concerned at the risk of a drone collision. It is possible that the rogue drones may go undetected around the perimeter or could obstruct the flight paths outside the immediate detection zone.”
The transport secretary, Chris Grayling, said on Friday it was uncertain whether more than one drone had been involved. He had previously said “substantial drones” had caused the chaos. In the face of mounting criticism from Labour, he denied he had ignored warnings and said he was planning to hold talks with airports soon to discuss the lessons from Gatwick and try to prevent similar disruption.
Pilots’ unions, aviation bodies and opposition politicians have called for tougher measures and immediate action, including wider exclusion zones around airports.
Grayling told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme it was “a new kind of attack” and the perpetrator would face a substantial jail sentence. He said it was unlikely to be the action of a foreign state, but that he was not ruling anything out.
“We will have to learn very quickly from what happened … I intend to convene discussions with airports around the UK,” he said, though he added: “The reality is the ability to stop drones is just emerging … There certainly isn’t a straightforward, off-the-shelf, commercial solution.”
Labour and technology companies said there were options, which airports had chosen not to pay for. The shadow transport secretary, Andy McDonald, said Grayling should take responsibility for ignoring warnings. “The government has neither understood nor fully assessed the risk posed by drones to the UK’s national infrastructure,” he said. “It has not undertaken anything like appropriate contingency planning. And it has not prepared properly, despite protective technology being available.”
Gatwick continued to advise passengers to check with their airlines before they came to the airport, and said it could not rule out further drone disruption. The airport’s chief operating officer, Chris Woodroofe, said the airport had been exploring anti-drone technology for more than a year, but there was “no commercial solution licensed to operate at airports which is proven to work”.
The Civil Aviation Authority said passengers were not entitled to compensation. Grayling said he would talk to the insurance industry and hoped it would take an “enlightened view” on passengers’ claims.
• The graphic in this article was amended on 21 December 2018 to clarify that drones must not fly within 150 metres of crowds and built-up areas
