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Post by nyx on Dec 21, 2018 2:41:00 GMT
On Thursday Gatwick was declared an emergency has the police and military flocked to the airport.
Thousands stranded in planes, on the runway, and in the building.
What the heck happened?
Another article claimed the mystery object was in the sky all day, but no one could shoot it down?
The military could not shoot it down? |
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Post by swamprat on Dec 21, 2018 16:55:43 GMT
Welcome to the 21st century.....London Gatwick Turns to Army as Drones Ruin Holiday Getaway
By Christopher Jasper, Ellen Milligan, and Kitty Donaldson
Updated on December 20, 2018
Airport dogged by unmanned craft since late Wednesday
Hundreds of flights grounded with 115,000 due to travel
London’s Gatwick airport turned to the military after police were unable to stop incursions by illegal drones that have closed the hub for approaching 24 hours, disrupting journeys for more than 100,000 people on one of the busiest travel days of the year.
Thousands of passengers hunkered down on departure-hall floors Thursday in anticipation of flights resuming, but sporadic sightings of the mystery craft led the airport to extend the shutdown throughout the day.
Gatwick Chief Executive Officer Stewart Wingate said the criminal intrusions involving two drones were “highly targeted” and designed to close the airport with maximum disruption in the run up to Christmas. Police said the actions were clearly deliberate, though most likely not terror related.
With night falling and authorities apparently no closer to finding the perpetrators, U.K. Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson announced that military assistance would be provided to help end the disruption, the worst at a London airport since blizzards closed the city’s main Heathrow hub in 2013. The Ministry of Defense said that forces would deploy specialist equipment.
“Obviously once it gets dark you cannot physically see a drone, which will make it more difficult, but the police are out in force trying to spot it,” Gatwick spokeswoman Mandy Armstrong said by phone.
The Department for Transport said that a ban on night operations at other U.K. airports would be temporarily lifted to help ease the backlog of flights.
Reports of two objects above Gatwick caused services to be halted at about 9 p.m. on Wednesday, with more than 50 incoming planes diverted to other hubs across Britain and some in mainland Europe. The airport reopened after six hours, only to shut again 45 minutes later amid further sightings.
Services remained grounded through the peak morning departure period and into the afternoon and evening, with a daylight search aided by helicopters failing to locate the devices or their operators. Gatwick is the world’s busiest single-runway hub, the biggest base for discount carrier EasyJet Plc and the focus for long-haul leisure flights at British Airways.
Ryanair Holdings Plc will shift its Friday flights at Gatwick to London’s Stansted Airport, according to a statement by the airline.
“We believe this to be a deliberate act to disrupt the airport,” Gatwick police commander Superintendent Justin Burtenshaw said in a statement. “However, there are absolutely no indications to suggest this is terror related.”
Gatwick said customers should check with their airline before heading to the airport. “We’re sorry for the inconvenience today, but the safety of our passengers and staff is our no. 1 priority,” it added.
Diverted or canceled arrivals Wednesday night affected about 6,000 people at carriers including Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd. and Norwegian Air Shuttle ASA, while 2,000 more were unable to depart on 18 scrapped services. The extended closing means hundreds of daytime operations may be lost in what would be one of the worst-ever disruptions to schedules by illegal drone incursions.
Even when the airport reopens, further upheaval is likely, with EasyJet saying in a statement that the overnight shutdown has left aircraft and crew rostered to fly from Gatwick stranded at other locations.
London is served by about half a dozen airports, and some passengers at Gatwick said they were seeking to book flights from Heathrow, about 30 miles away, in order to complete their journeys.
One couple who had been planning to spend Christmas in the Caribbean said they’d traveled for two hours from the English Midlands to catch a flight to Barbados, but like thousands of other found that it was unable to operate.
Others tweeted their frustrations while generally supporting the airport’s decision to close. “Right call Gatwick,” one person said, though another suggested that police should seek to shoot down any trespassing craft, and a third argued that with day dawning “either you can see a drone or you can’t.”
Unmanned aerial vehicles and laser pointers are becoming an increasing threat for aircraft, prompting regulators to come up with new rules against operating the devices near airfields.
Dubai International Airport shut down temporarily in 2016 after suspected drone activity, while airspace around Wellington, New Zealand, was closed for 30 minutes this year when a craft was spotted flying close to the runway. And Grupo Aeromexico SAB last week said was investigating whether a drone collided with a Boeing Co. 737 aircraft as the plane approached Tijuana, Mexico. The jet sustained damage to its nose but landed safely.
Different Birds
“In the past, trying to skirt around birds was hard enough and now you’ve got a different kind of bird made out of metal or plastic,” said Mohshin Aziz, an aviation analyst at Maybank Investment Bank Bhd. in Kuala Lumpur. “A drone strike is far, far more damaging than a bird strike.”
While governments bar drones from paths reserved for airliners, with Britain outlawing flights above 400 feet or within 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) of an airport boundary, the millions of small consumer devices that have been purchased around the world can’t be tracked on radar.
That makes it difficult to enforce the rules. In addition, many users don’t know the restrictions -- or don’t follow them.
U.K. Aviation Minister Liz Sugg said the government was in close contact with the airport as it worked with police to “safely resolve the situation as quickly as possible.”
Prime Minister Theresa May said that the disruption was “particularly difficult for people” to bear in the run up to Christmas and the New Year, and that the drone operators face as many as five years in jail if caught.
www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-19/london-s-gatwick-airport-suspends-all-flights-on-drone-report
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Post by nyx on Dec 21, 2018 17:53:51 GMT
SkyNews just said the airport is closed again from drones.
This is too strange because you would think the military could stop a drone that is just hanging around the airport.
A sharp shooter should take it out.
Then again is this more than just a drone, like a real UFO?
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Post by thelmadonna on Dec 21, 2018 22:57:37 GMT
SkyNews just said the airport is closed again from drones. This is too strange because you would think the military could stop a drone that is just hanging around the airport. A sharp shooter should take it out. Then again is this more than just a drone, like a real UFO? I find it pretty odd that none of the newspapers, the same newspapers that flood the search engines everyday with reports of UFO, have never come even close to mentioning them! Or there could be others that think at this time of the year, it could be seen as the Second Coming, not a mention of that either.  |
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Post by HAL on Dec 21, 2018 23:21:39 GMT
No point in shooting the drone(s) down.
The perpetrator just gets another one.
You have to get the operator.
I can imagine a dog-fight between the nasty drone and a police drone where the police drone is aiming to attach a tracker to the bad guy.
It has to go home sometime; or run out of fuel.
Anyway, all drones should carry some kind of transponder that identifies itself.
HAL.
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Post by swamprat on Dec 22, 2018 2:11:30 GMT
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Post by nyx on Dec 22, 2018 2:54:19 GMT
The UK bought Israel’s Rafael System for 20 million dollars.
Rafael stops drone attacks.
Now Gatwick is opened and protected.
I did not know Gatwick is the largest plane traffic for only a one runway airport.
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Post by thelmadonna on Dec 23, 2018 11:21:52 GMT
The UK bought Israel’s Rafael System for 20 million dollars. Rafael stops drone attacks. Now Gatwick is opened and protected. I did not know Gatwick is the largest plane traffic for only a one runway airport. Two people were arrested on Friday night and have been released without charge this morning. UFO for sure now, in my mind at least. |
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Post by thelmadonna on Dec 23, 2018 11:59:41 GMT
Perhaps the UFO flipped over to Europe This report comes from Portugal, not very far from South England. I was smoking on the porch of my house, as usual when I see a strange light of orange color and pulsating and with an apparent diamond shape, in that same location is usually the landing route of planes from the international airport of Sa Porto - Portugal, what caught my attention was the time parked and its slow movements, I searched for my camera that was stored and I captured some images and made some videos for your analysis, the visualization of the object occurred on the last day 20 from December 2018 from 11:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. www.mufoncms.com/files_jeud8334j/97172_submitter_file1__MVI1814Bandalarga.m4vwww.mufoncms.com/files_jeud8334j/97172_submitter_file2__MVI1824Bandalarga.m4v  There is also an USA report to come |
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Post by thelmadonna on Dec 23, 2018 12:09:32 GMT
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Post by swamprat on Dec 28, 2018 22:52:19 GMT
1 Broken Drone, No Video, 2 Suspects Released: Gatwick Episode Doesn’t Add Up
By Ceylan Yeginsu
Dec. 24, 2018
LONDON — The tally so far: Britain’s second-busiest airport stalled for 36 hours. About 1,000 flights diverted or canceled. Around 140,000 passengers inconvenienced at the height of holiday travels.
That was last week, when British officials said that drones had been spotted flying near Gatwick Airport, south of London, and shut it down.
The score since then? One broken drone recovered, and a British couple detained and then released over the weekend without being charged.
If the investigators seem flummoxed, they are.
The fact that Gatwick is one of the most heavily surveilled strips of land in England, combined with an absence of video of any drone, left the lead investigator, Detective Chief Superintendent Jason Tingley, questioning whether drones were in fact involved at all.
The police are relying on 67 witness accounts from the public, passengers, police officers and airport staff members from Wednesday to Friday, and are also examining a damaged drone found near the airport for DNA, fingerprints and other evidence.
“We are interviewing those who have reported these sightings and are carrying out extensive house-to-house inquiries,” Chief Superintendent Tingley said in a statement on Monday.
But no one has ventured to say: If not drones, what?
On Monday, the Sussex police, somewhat defensively, released another statement reiterating that the sightings remained at the forefront of their investigation — and listing nearly all of them.
“We can unequivocally state that there have been numerous illegal drone sightings at the airport over three days from 19 to 21 December,” Sussex Police Deputy Chief Constable Jo Shiner said.
“There were numerous reports clustered around 37 occasions where a drone or drones were seen,” she added, “and I am keen for those responsible to be brought to justice.”
Last week, officials insisted that the drones had appeared to be a “deliberate act to endanger the airfield and aircraft,” though they did not appear to be linked to terrorism.
Gatwick Airport shut down abruptly on Wednesday after the first supposed drone sighting was reported around 9 p.m., with new drone sightings popping up every time officials prepared to resume operations. The airport, which was closed for more than 36 hours, reopened on Friday.
A half-hour after the initial sighting, six people — including five police officers — reported seeing a drone with white and red lights within 15 minutes of one another, the Sussex police said in its statement on Monday.
The next morning, Dec. 21, at around 1:15 a.m., six people — three airport workers and three police officers — also reported seeing a drone within 30 minutes of one another.
Later that day, another six people reported drone sightings, including a pilot, whose account was corroborated by another airport staff member.
The episode is being investigated under the Aviation and Maritime Security Act, which carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
A former Scotland Yard detective, who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the news media about the investigation, said the situation was alarming from a counterterrorism perspective.
Referring to a report in The Times of London that claimed Al Qaeda was resurgent and plotting new attacks on airliners and airports that involve drones, the former detective said the Gatwick episode made Britain look unprepared and vulnerable, and could provoke criminals to carry out copycat attacks.
He also said he did not understand how there could be over 60 witness statements but no video to back up the claims, especially in the age of smartphones.
Aviation experts said the episode should act as a warning that there is an urgent need to impose adequate tracking and identification of drones.
“It’s simply not enough to have a rule in place that you can’t fly a drone within 1 kilometer of an airport, higher than 400 feet, beyond visual line of sight or over people,” said Kenneth Quinn, the Global Aviation Chair at the Baker McKenzie law firm.
“You have to be able to enforce these rules and prevent violations,’’ he added. ‘‘This can’t be done without knowing where it is, and who is flying it.”
The Sussex police insisted on Monday that the release of the initial suspects was “not back to square one” on the investigation and that progress was being made on the case.
Gatwick Airport announced that it was offering a reward of 50,000 pounds, about $63,000, for information that would lead to “the arrest and conviction of those responsible for the criminal act that disrupted flights.” An additional £10,000 is being offered by the charity CrimeStoppers.
Chief Tingley said the police were pursuing a number of lines of inquiry and people of interest. Government ministers are expected to hold a conference call on Monday to discuss developments in the investigation.
And at least for now, the planes are flying.
www.nytimes.com/2018/12/24/world/europe/gatwick-airport-drone.html
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Post by nyx on Dec 29, 2018 2:33:37 GMT
This is very high strangeness!
The airport closed for 36 hours, a big response from the police and military, and buying Israel’s Rafael System for 20 million dollars.
I just know UFOs love military bases and airports.
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