What a few days before Christmas London and its citizens are living. Gatwick, the busiest airport in the United Kingdom behind Heathrow, has been closed for the second time today. The cause in both cases? He drone sighting Around the area. This is what is known at the moment.
Closed due to suspicious sighting
El airport from Gatwick, in London (United Kingdom), has been forced to stay for an hour closed During today. Worst of all, it's the second time in less than 24 hours that it does and the cause is none other, on both occasions, than the sighting of unidentified drones in the area.
The chaos began last Wednesday when a little before 22:00 p.m. a drone was sighted in the area of ​​unknown origin. This was followed by no less than 40 (yes, cuarenta) records more than sightings of drones that have caused the airport to remain closed from the appointed time until 6 in the morning on Friday.
When it seemed that everything had returned to normal -the last drone had been seen at 10 pm on Thursday-, Gatwick has been seen forced to close again their doors for an hour (from 5 to 6 in the afternoon) for seeing again in the sky the presence of a unidentified drone.
This unexpected activity and the consequent stoppage of activity at the airport have caused delays to more than 120.000 passengers who have seen their flights canceled or delayed due to circumstances.
En Eldiario.es point out that British army and police They are deployed in the area from the outset to be able to identify the person in charge or people in charge of pilot these drones -It is not even known how many different people or drones we are talking about. It is not known, of course, the reason of this action. At this time there are several open lines of investigation, including that it is a sign of protest by some environmental group. This last theory is motivated by a group of local activists, who have described the closure of the airport as an "early Christmas present".
The pilots' union has shown its natural concern over an incident of this nature, which could cause the car of an airplane with a drone and unwanted distractions during landing or takeoff. "[...] It is possible that drones enter the perimeter without being detected or that they obstruct the flight path outside the detection zone," they indicate through their official Twitter account.