7 ms·

Gatwick Airport: Drones ground flights

sgroppino 8y ago
Affecting 100K passengers... how come this is not top 10 in HN?
- gandalfian 8y ago
  It's the main national news in the UK. Whether it is developing into mass hysteria or an agitant is really using industrial sized drones to cause chaos is impossible to know. As one of the main hubs in and out of europe a lot of people are getting very worried for holiday gatherings.
  - jackpeterfletch 8y ago
    By the end of friday 250,000 people will have been displaced. I dont know how you really deal with that!
- j4ah4n 8y ago
  Been wondering this all afternoon as I've been curious how one could track down the operator, then I realized it didn't need one. :/ It is (at least it was this morning) being billed as being an "industrial specification" drone, which implied that made it more difficult somehow. Would love to hear others opinions on the options. Amazing its going to remain closed going into Friday.
opwieurposiu 8y ago
Half the time these "Drones" are just birds or plastic bags. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/04/drone-that-hit-british-airways-jet-was-likely-a-plastic-bag/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/04/drone...
adamiscool8 8y ago
I genuinely don't understand how it can be a 24+ hour operation just to take out a drone. Don't jets regularly get scrambled in response to less disruptive intrusions? Doesn't the battery die at some point? Can't they follow it to where it lands and take it out of commission? Couldn't someone have woven a giant net by now?
- matthewmacleod 8y ago
  As I understand it, the drone(s) have been vanishing then reappearing at various points throughout the day. While it seems quite easy to deal with the issue at first glance, I can see why this would be difficult to deal with. A drone strike at takeoff could be pretty catastrophic, so there is rightly an attitude of erring on the side of safety; flights are unlikely to resume until the authorities are fairly certain the drone is gone. But they are pretty small, so it doesn’t seem like it would be terribly easy to track them. The operator may be using multiple drones, and could potentially be quite far away from Gatwick - I’m no drone expert, but I understand 6-7km range with a 30min flight time is feasible. That’s quite a wide area to search. Honestly I’m surprised that we haven’t seen this happen before now; it seems like such an easy attack. I would guess that we might even see a rash of copycat attacks.
  - adamiscool8 8y ago
    I totally understand why they'd have to err towards caution on the initial appearance, but the drones aren't teleporting away when they vanish. The combined power of the authorities can't follow a drone for 30 minutes and capture it? Something just seems off.
    - shard972 8y ago
      The brits are not sending their best apparently.
    - alasdair_ 8y ago
      A few autonomous gps-guided drones are all that is needed. No one would need to come back to get them. $200 could shut down an airport for hours
jnellis 8y ago
Someone posted a topdown photo of Gatwick from about 3000ft on reddit this morning. I was wondering how they got that picture. https://www.reddit.com/r/CasualUK/comments/a7za4i/this_photo_i_took_of_gatwick_this_morning/ https://www.reddit.com/r/CasualUK/comments/a7za4i/this_photo...
- alasdair_ 8y ago
  /r/whoosh
- Gaelan 8y ago
  I think that's a stock photo (jokingly implying that they were responsible)
  - solarkraft 8y ago
    I see now. My first thought was that they're responsible, but from the text the photo appears to be a PR photo and the post tounge-in-cheek.
codeduck 8y ago
I wonder how long it will be before airports need to run point-defence lasers to interdict things like this.
- solarkraft 8y ago
  Automated interceptor-drones must be a thing by now. I know for certain there's a german company specializing in drone-defense, but I think their competency lies mostly with detection/jamming.
  - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
    They're going to have a full order book!
pjc50 8y ago
Conspiracy theory: a lot of people have pointed out that no pictures of the alleged drone are circulating. This comes at the end of a week in which the government is moving towards no-deal Brexit. Is this some kind of test of the emergency response?
- pbhjpbhj 8y ago
  Unlikely. My "conspiracy" theory would be that there's been an active terror threat, that they're handling but don't want to go pubic with. The UK government must have anti-drone measures, surely? It also seems possible that opposing forces could organise this to flush out details of drone responses, you can't exactly hide your countermeasures when they're in the open at Gatwick.
- lawlessone 8y ago
  There was video of it flying around Gatwick online. https://news.sky.com/video/gatwick-drone-caught-on-camera-in-unverified-footage-11587927 https://news.sky.com/video/gatwick-drone-caught-on-camera-in...

Affecting 100K passengers... how come this is not top 10 in HN?

gandalfian 8y ago
It's the main national news in the UK. Whether it is developing into mass hysteria or an agitant is really using industrial sized drones to cause chaos is impossible to know. As one of the main hubs in and out of europe a lot of people are getting very worried for holiday gatherings.
- jackpeterfletch 8y ago
  By the end of friday 250,000 people will have been displaced. I dont know how you really deal with that!
j4ah4n 8y ago
Been wondering this all afternoon as I've been curious how one could track down the operator, then I realized it didn't need one. :/ It is (at least it was this morning) being billed as being an "industrial specification" drone, which implied that made it more difficult somehow. Would love to hear others opinions on the options. Amazing its going to remain closed going into Friday.

Half the time these "Drones" are just birds or plastic bags. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/04/drone-that-hit-british-airways-jet-was-likely-a-plastic-bag/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/04/drone...

adamiscool8 8y ago

I genuinely don't understand how it can be a 24+ hour operation just to take out a drone. Don't jets regularly get scrambled in response to less disruptive intrusions? Doesn't the battery die at some point? Can't they follow it to where it lands and take it out of commission? Couldn't someone have woven a giant net by now?

matthewmacleod 8y ago
As I understand it, the drone(s) have been vanishing then reappearing at various points throughout the day. While it seems quite easy to deal with the issue at first glance, I can see why this would be difficult to deal with. A drone strike at takeoff could be pretty catastrophic, so there is rightly an attitude of erring on the side of safety; flights are unlikely to resume until the authorities are fairly certain the drone is gone. But they are pretty small, so it doesn’t seem like it would be terribly easy to track them. The operator may be using multiple drones, and could potentially be quite far away from Gatwick - I’m no drone expert, but I understand 6-7km range with a 30min flight time is feasible. That’s quite a wide area to search. Honestly I’m surprised that we haven’t seen this happen before now; it seems like such an easy attack. I would guess that we might even see a rash of copycat attacks.
- adamiscool8 8y ago
  I totally understand why they'd have to err towards caution on the initial appearance, but the drones aren't teleporting away when they vanish. The combined power of the authorities can't follow a drone for 30 minutes and capture it? Something just seems off.
  - shard972 8y ago
    The brits are not sending their best apparently.
  - alasdair_ 8y ago
    A few autonomous gps-guided drones are all that is needed. No one would need to come back to get them. $200 could shut down an airport for hours

jnellis 8y ago

Someone posted a topdown photo of Gatwick from about 3000ft on reddit this morning. I was wondering how they got that picture. https://www.reddit.com/r/CasualUK/comments/a7za4i/this_photo_i_took_of_gatwick_this_morning/ https://www.reddit.com/r/CasualUK/comments/a7za4i/this_photo...

alasdair_ 8y ago
/r/whoosh
Gaelan 8y ago
I think that's a stock photo (jokingly implying that they were responsible)
- solarkraft 8y ago
  I see now. My first thought was that they're responsible, but from the text the photo appears to be a PR photo and the post tounge-in-cheek.

codeduck 8y ago

I wonder how long it will be before airports need to run point-defence lasers to interdict things like this.

solarkraft 8y ago
Automated interceptor-drones must be a thing by now. I know for certain there's a german company specializing in drone-defense, but I think their competency lies mostly with detection/jamming.
- pbhjpbhj 8y ago
  They're going to have a full order book!

pjc50 8y ago

Conspiracy theory: a lot of people have pointed out that no pictures of the alleged drone are circulating. This comes at the end of a week in which the government is moving towards no-deal Brexit. Is this some kind of test of the emergency response?

pbhjpbhj 8y ago
Unlikely. My "conspiracy" theory would be that there's been an active terror threat, that they're handling but don't want to go pubic with. The UK government must have anti-drone measures, surely? It also seems possible that opposing forces could organise this to flush out details of drone responses, you can't exactly hide your countermeasures when they're in the open at Gatwick.
lawlessone 8y ago
There was video of it flying around Gatwick online. https://news.sky.com/video/gatwick-drone-caught-on-camera-in-unverified-footage-11587927 https://news.sky.com/video/gatwick-drone-caught-on-camera-in...