Man and Woman Arrested Over Drone Incursions at Gatwick Airport

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After three days of intense disruption, Gatwick Airport, near London, hoped to run a full schedule of more than 750 flights on Saturday.CreditCreditPeter Nicholls/Reuters

By Palko Karasz

Dec. 22, 2018

LONDON — A 47-year-old man and a 54-year-old woman were arrested on suspicion of wreaking havoc with a drone at Gatwick Airport, Britain’s second largest air travel hub, forcing hundreds of planes to be grounded or diverted and tens of thousands of holiday travelers to be delayed.

The two people were detained around 10 p.m. local time Friday on “suspicion of disrupting services of civil aviation aerodrome to endanger or likely to endanger safety of operations or persons,” the Sussex police said in a statement on Saturday.

Those offenses carry a maximum sentence of life imprisonment on conviction, according to the police.

The man and the woman, who were not identified but are both from Crawley, a town just south of the airport, remained in custody on Saturday. The police did not release further details. The suspects have not yet been formally charged.

The drone sightings had forced the cancellation or diversion of more than 1,000 flights over three days, affecting 140,000 people, officials said. On Saturday, Gatwick warned passengers to expect still more delays and cancellations and to check their flight status before traveling to the airport.

Gatwick Airport, which has a single runway about 25 miles south of Central London, has been rated among the worst in Europe and the world in quality and punctuality surveys. But it is one of the busiest on the continent, and the drone incursions proved to be a challenge for airport officials, with fliers and others questioning how the airport shutdown was handled.

The first drone sighting occurred around 9 p.m. on Wednesday, and within 48 hours, the airport runway had been buzzed more than 40 times, forcing officials to shut down and reopen the airport several times. It was unclear if the activity involved one drone, or more.

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Gatwick Airport shut down after a drone appeared in what authorities are calling “a deliberate act” to disrupt air travel.Published OnDec. 20, 2018CreditCreditPeter Nicholls/Reuters

Officials scrambled to find solutions, considering ideas such as using police sharp shooters to bring down the devices, but that was deemed to be too dangerous. By Thursday night, the British armed forces were called in to try to secure the airspace.

The Royal Air Force would not confirm what equipment was used, but news reports suggested it was the same system used to secure the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle at Windsor Castle in May.

After three days of disruption, the airport began steady flights once again about 6 p.m. Friday, and hoped to run a full schedule of carrying about 120,000 passengers on more than 750 flights on Saturday, the BBC reported.

The disruption at Gatwick rippled around the world, with passengers forced to find accommodation or wait on long lines to know if they would be able to fly home for the holidays.

Britain’s transport secretary, Chris Grayling, acknowledged that the government needed to speed up its response. “We’re going to have to learn very quickly from what’s happened,” he said in an interview with the BBC on Friday.

The chaos drew scrutiny to Britain’s policy on the growing number of drone users in the country, which has been slow to adopt a drone registry, analysts say. The United States Federal Aviation Administration has required drone operators to register since 2015, allowing the devices to be identified.

In Britain, the authorities will begin similar registrations from November next year.