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Last week, I wrote about the drones that caused a disruption at Gatwick Airport. The airport, located just south of London, was closed for almost two days. The closure caused numerous diversions and delays. On last Friday, a couple was arrested in connection with the incident, but they were soon released. This is where the story about what occurred at the airport gets really weird. Numerous websites and blogs have launched conspiracy theories about what happened. I figured it to be fair to provide you all some of the “fodder”.
The New York Times reported that the conflicting reports of drone sightings, without video evidence, just leads to uncertainty about what really occurred. The article even suggests that a terrorist organization could have been testing vulnerabilities at the airport.
According to the Daily Mail, Sussex Police were able to recover fingerprints from a drone that crashed at the airport, but were unable to locate the person because the prints were clean. This meant the person(s) had no previous criminal history.
Lastly, The Guardian published a report that offered a stern warning to Gatwick Airport (or any other entity that was reading). The report stated that the communication between response forces was flawed and even suggested that there may not have been any drones at the airport. Cressida Dick, The United Kingdom’s most senior police chief offered the following: “I think the whole country and certainly the government will have watched what’s gone on and say we need to up our game here, we need to work even more closely with the private companies, we need to work even more closely with the military, we need to try to be able to prevent the criminal use of drones for whatever motivation near our airports – and, if somebody does do that, we need to find them as quickly as possible, get the drone under control and also bring the people to justice.”
Final Word
I do not actually know what happened at Gatwick Airport last Wednesday. I do, however, appreciate that the airport erred on the side of caution rather than launching aircraft for a potentially catastrophic event. We may not never know what truly happened at Gatwick, but I can assure you that passengers made it safely to their destinations. If not, this would have been an entirely different blog post.
