The military has been called in to deal with a drone causing travel chaos at London’s Gatwick Airport in what has been characterized as a deliberate act of sabotage.
Gatwick remained closed Thursday, disrupting the pre-Christmas travel of more than 110, 000 people as over 650 flights were canceled or diverted.
It had been closed since Wednesday night because a drone or drones had been repeatedly flown over the airfield.
Sussex police are hunting for the person or persons responsible and have warned the offense attracts up to five years in jail. They are believed to be using an industrial category drone and operating it at a distance. It is not believed to terror-related.
Supt Justin Burtenshaw, the head of armed policing for Sussex and Surrey, told the BBC whomever was controlling the drones was “painstaking” because it was “a difficult and challenging thing to locate them”.
“Each time we believe we get close to the operator, the drone disappears; when we look to reopen the airfield, the drone reappears,” he said.
It was not clear late Thursday when the airport would re-open and officials say it could take days to clear the backlog.
The airport ’s biggest operator, Ryanair, announced all flights scheduled to operate from Gatwick on Friday would instead operate from London Stansted.
Apologetic Gatwick chief executive Stewart Wingate said he shared the anger and frustration over the inconvenience caused by “this criminal behavior”.
“This is a highly targeted activity which has been designed to close the airport and bring maximum disruption in the run-up to Christmas,’’ Wingate said.
“We are working very closely with the police and the security services to try to resolve this for passengers.
“We hope passengers appreciate that we must and will always prioritize their safety over everything else. “
Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson confirmed that the army had been deployed at Gatwick.
“The armed forces have a range of unique capabilities and this isn’t something we would usually deploy but we are there to assist and do everything we can so that they are in a position to open the airport at the earliest opportunity,” he said.
Gatwick’s CEO also noted the wider challenge posed by the disruption for the aviation industry.
“Although not for today, these events obviously highlight a wider strategic challenge for aviation in this country which we need to address together with speed – the aviation industry, Government and all the other relevant authorities,” Wingate said.
“It cannot be right that drones can close a vital part of our national infrastructure in this way. This is obviously a relatively new technology and we need to think through together the right solutions to make sure it cannot happen again.”
