Drones Shut Down London Airport in What Authorities Call Deliberate Disruption

[Luca Rallis]

Quote

More than 100 flights at one of Europe’s busiest airports were grounded Thursday by drone operations that authorities say were a deliberate attempt to disrupt travel.

 

Police and military forces were involved in the response, Britain’s aviation minister Liz Sugg said. Sussex police said the drones were of an “industrial specification,” rather than a toy or amateur unmanned aircraft.

 

I wonder what the purpose of this attack was. Because there were numerous drones, and they were of industrial specification, it can't be just a few kids wanting to mess around.

 

Quote

The drone flights near the airport began late Wednesday and continued into Thursday, the airport operator said. Some flights, including to the U.S., were grounded and others diverted to land at other airports, stranding, diverting or delaying tens of thousands of passengers in the run-up to the busy holiday travel period.

 

Quote

The disruption comes a week after authorities in Mexico started investigating a possible collision between a drone and a Boeing 737 jetliner. The Aeromexico flight sustained damage to the nose on landing, though the plane landed safely.

 

Air safety authorities have become increasingly concerned about the rapid growth in the use of commercial drones, often as toys. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration now tracks more than 1,000 suspected incidents of near misses by planes and unmanned aircraft a year. 

 

Quote

“Even two kilograms of metal and plastic, including the battery, hitting an aircraft windscreen or engine or a helicopter tail rotor, could be catastrophic,” Rob Hunter, the head of flight safety at the British Airline Pilots’ Association said earlier in December.

 

Drones seem to be becoming an even greater threat to public safety. Obviously this is something that governments should be taking a closer look at. I'm interested to see if drone regulations are tightened in the coming years. It wouldn't surprise me at all.

 

Quote

At Gatwick, flight operations were halted Wednesday at 9:03 p.m. local time after two drone sightings were reported. The facility reopened at 3:01 a.m. Thursday before closing less than 45 minutes later because of renewed concerns about drone flights around the airfield.

 

Source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-bound-flights-from-major-u-k-airport-grounded-over-drone-fears-11545295342

[TempestCatto]

This makes no sense to me. As far as I know all drones sold to the public have some sort of sensor(s) in them to specifically not allow them within a few miles of an active airport. Are people disabling these so they can foam? Or am I just imagining the whole sensor thing? Either way, I hope those people are criminally charged. They just costed so many companies and even people millions of dollars in disruptions.

[bcredeur97]

9 minutes ago, TempestCatto said:

This makes no sense to me. As far as I know all drones sold to the public have some sort of sensor(s) in them to specifically not allow them within a few miles of an active airport. Are people disabling these so they can foam? Or am I just imagining the whole sensor thing? Either way, I hope those people are criminally charged. They just costed so many companies and even people millions of dollars in disruptions.

these were industrial drones.

So someone with big monies is behind this

[Tech_Dreamer]

could be an insider smuggling group getting caught with their new toy.

[TempestCatto]

Then what qualifies as an "industrial" drone? Something used by wild-land firefighters to fly deep into the forest to see what the fire's doing? Or is "industrial" just being substituted for "military"? A quick Google search brought me to other companies who use DJI drones as a base, and provide their own camera's and interfaces. There's no way DJI doesn't have those sensors in them.

[Misanthrope]

5 minutes ago, bcredeur97 said:

these were industrial drones.

So someone with big monies is behind this

Well...you don't really need "big monies" to jerry rig yourself a custom drone controller to be honest. Probably manual basic flight on a trajectory that could be set within the limits of the no go zone but I could see a drone set to "keep going" with custom controllers would just keep on advancing to the no-flight zone.

 

I am actually kind of surprised this didn't happen sooner.

[Nicnac]

This is so sad (no we can't play despacito). Because of a few reckless people it will be ruined for everyone soon. Was the same with model airplanes in Germany where you now need to be member of a club, have a frickin insurance and every kind of permit imaginable if you want to fly them anywhere else than a model airplane club's airfield. 

Why are people so goddamn stupid and annoying?

[AlTech]

I hate to break it to you but Gatwick is neither "London Airport" nor "one of Europe's busiest Airports". Pretty big failure on the part of WSJ for the latter.

 

For the former, London has iirc 5 airports so calling one "London Airport" is more than a tad misleading or confusing as none of them are actually called London Airport.

[GoldenLag]

15 minutes ago, TempestCatto said:

Then what qualifies as an "industrial" drone? Something used by wild-land firefighters to fly deep into the forest to see what the fire's doing? Or is "industrial" just being substituted for "military"? A quick Google search brought me to other companies who use DJI drones as a base, and provide their own camera's and interfaces. There's no way DJI doesn't have those sensors in them.

youll be surprised how quickly you can scap together a drone. (that is assuming they were home-made)

 

also industrial is probably subsituted for drones that usually carry some sort of payload. like Camera, scan sensors or other multikilopayloads. 

[Nicnac]

2 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

I hate to break it to you but Gatwick is neither "London Airport" nor "one of Europe's busiest Airports". Pretty big failure on the part of WSJ for the latter.

 

For the former, London has iirc 5 airports so calling one "London Airport" is more than a tad misleading or confusing as none of them are actually called London Airport.

lol totally skipped all that cause I was getting worked up over the whole thing ^^ WSJ at it's best

[Master Disaster]

4 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

I hate to break it to you but Gatwick is neither "London Airport" nor "one of Europe's busiest Airports". Pretty big failure on the part of WSJ for the latter.

 

For the former, London has iirc 5 airports so calling one "London Airport" is more than a tad misleading or confusing as none of them are actually called London Airport.

It's number 8 on the list of busiest airports in Europe...

 

Anywho on topic whoever is responsible for this has now ruined drones for everyone. I'm calling it right now, by the end of next year anything bigger than a kids toy will be banned unless under licence.

[TempestCatto]

@GoldenLag that makes sense if they home built them (don't know why I didn't think of that).

[AlTech]

4 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

Anywho on topic whoever is responsible for this has now ruined drones for everyone. I'm calling it right now, by the end of next year anything bigger than a kids toy will be banned unless under licence.

What's the main use case for drones for consumers outside of recording video? For industrial use I could see delivery etc but still not sure how relevant it is for consumer markets.

 

Except if the FBI and NSA buy shit tons and use them to illegally surveil people

[GoldenLag]

1 minute ago, TempestCatto said:

@GoldenLag that makes sense if they home built them (don't know why I didn't think of that).

a drone can be as simple as 4 engines + controls for the engines. every part is commercially avavible in large quantitites

 

also tag properly like this: @TempestCatto

[Master Disaster]

1 minute ago, AluminiumTech said:

What's the main use case for drones for consumers outside of recording video? For industrial use I could see delivery etc but still not sure how relevant it is for consumer markets.

 

Except if the FBI and NSA but shit tons and use them to illegally surveil people

I imagine the same as radio control helicopters and planes, sport & recreation, and I can see certain groups of sports people using drones to record themselves doing things.

[TempestCatto]

1 minute ago, GoldenLag said:

a drone can be as simple as 4 engines + controls for the engines. every part is commercially avavible in large quantitites

 

also tag properly like this: @TempestCatto

I was purposefully not trying to full on tag (wasn't sure about tag etiquette here. Some places hate it)

[TempestCatto]

4 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

What's the main use case for drones for consumers outside of recording video? For industrial use I could see delivery etc but still not sure how relevant it is for consumer markets.

 

Except if the FBI and NSA buy shit tons and use them to illegally surveil people

There's people that race drones. Plus, as someone else said, they can be fun to fly. Much like RC planes are flown for fun and RC cars are driven for fun (and both are also raced as well)

[GoldenLag]

Just now, TempestCatto said:

I was purposefully not trying to full on tag (wasn't sure about tag etiquette here. Some places hate it)

then just quote. a lot of people disslike it here if they got an responce without knowing. 

Spoiler

also welcome to the forum, Pony count: 3     ALERT: Population has rizen by 50%

then again im expecting restrictions to be inbound on these drones. we might even see personell and or hardware actively looking for drones. How long to find the frequency and Jam it out of the skies?

[TempestCatto]

2 minutes ago, GoldenLag said:

 

  Hide contents

also welcome to the forum, Pony count: 3     ALERT: Population has rizen by 50%

 

There's only three whole Pones in this big ol' place? lol wut?

[Fasterthannothing]

I've read some speculation it's kids doing this I highly doubt it's kids behind this. Not saying they can't build drones but highly unlikely kids would just buy drones off the shelf (unless your a nerd like me). You need custom builds to fabricate drones like this that can fly anywhere without Geo fences. Also for people who don't know alot about drone controllers jamming the frequency on a custom drone will not drop it out of the sky and it won't return home if setup certain ways. Drones with custom firmware can fly anywhere and can take off and land from anywhere with no human intervention needed. Theoretically someone could drop a few drones off near the airport program them to take off at a certain time and tell them to fly preprogrammed flight paths. Then have them fly somewhere else when the battery is about to die and the person could be hundreds of miles away while it's happening. 

 

Edit: The parts to build a drone like this are easy to find just need to know how to do it. 

[Noctus]

6 minutes ago, Shorty88jr said:

Theoretically someone could drop a few drones off near the airport program them to take off at a certain time and tell them to fly preprogrammed flight paths. Then have them fly somewhere else when the battery is about to die and the person could be hundreds of miles away while it's happening. 

Drones can already do that. There's a few motorbike vloggers i watch who reviewed their new drone back when they took off and helped their channel look more professional / better action shots etc and several showed the drones being able to use either google maps or their version of it to plot points that the drone automatically goes to. Complete with speed, elevation and how fast they rise/fall between the points. Wouldn't be a stretch to make it work without actually needing the main controller unit to be there so it knows where to go.

[Fasterthannothing]

4 minutes ago, Noctus said:

Drones can already do that. There's a few motorbike vloggers i watch who reviewed their new drone back when they took off and helped their channel look more professional / better action shots etc and several showed the drones being able to use either google maps or their version of it to plot points that the drone automatically goes to. Complete with speed, elevation and how fast they rise/fall between the points. Wouldn't be a stretch to make it work without actually needing the main controller unit to be there so it knows where to go.

Yeah I was saying theoretically in the sense of that's what might be going on here. Also I know that firmware people can get a hold of for custom built drones has a setting to disregard a controller missing or the signal dropping. 

[Noctus]

Just now, Shorty88jr said:

Yeah I was saying theoretically in the sense of that's what's going on here. Also I know that firmware people can get a hold of for custom built drones has a setting to disregard a controller missing or the signal dropping. 

Ah well, fair enough.

[Brooksie359]

45 minutes ago, Nicnac said:

This is so sad (no we can't play despacito). Because of a few reckless people it will be ruined for everyone soon. Was the same with model airplanes in Germany where you now need to be member of a club, have a frickin insurance and every kind of permit imaginable if you want to fly them anywhere else than a model airplane club's airfield. 

Why are people so goddamn stupid and annoying?

Honestly I don't mind if they regulated them into the ground. They have caused more issues than what they are worth. The whole privacy issue is a big reason people shouldn't be able to use them Willy nilly. This is another. 

[Brooksie359]

42 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

It's number 8 on the list of busiest airports in Europe...

 

Anywho on topic whoever is responsible for this has now ruined drones for everyone. I'm calling it right now, by the end of next year anything bigger than a kids toy will be banned unless under licence.

Good they were always annoying and problematic.