Gatwick Airport: Drone sightings cause delays

a reply to: Zaphod58

Should be easy to spot.

The drone will have a high vis yellow vest on.

a reply to: Zaphod58
Out of curiosity can radar info be obtained by freedom of information laws ? UK or the US I appreciate you may not know about the UK laws.

a reply to: ThePeaceMaker

You MIGHT be able to. Radar data for ATC is less sensitive than radar data. I'd be willing to bet that they'd fight it pretty hard though.

a reply to: Zaphod58
lol I wouldn't have the time, money or means to fight it. It's just something that came to my head when I was thinking outside the box about another possibility .. it involves UFOs ... yeah I'll shut up about that now no need to ridicule myself.

I do find the story odd though now that some are saying there may not have been a drone but at the same time they find a damaged drone on the perimeter. Also the coverage of the couple who were released without charge, I mean news companies surrounded their house and were taking photos and filming them being led back into their homes by police. Why all the big fuss

This event seems stranger and stranger. It's crazy to think that either a real drone sighting over days can shut down an airport or stories uncorroborated of drone sightings can still shut down an airport for days. After all that time of police helicopters searching and spotters on the ground no real release of video of the "multiple" sightings of these drones has been shown.

Does that mean that a drone did fly over that very First day and the rest of the time they were chasing ghosts?

Could it be that the police and military did get video of the drones over the days and don't want to release the video because it would show that it was something very sophisticated and possibly on a government level of development?

originally posted by: Zaphod58
Police say there might not have been a drone at all.

The two people arrested (so authorities wouldn't look so inept) have been released.
en.trend.az...

a reply to: carewemust

And had alibis, don't forget that part.

Think the poor souls were named and shamed also, which is outrageous, if somewhat profitable soon via legal recourse i imagine.

a reply to: Sparkitekt

The airport would had to have specialty equipment designed to intercept the Video Transmission. But yup it is possible.

Hacking encrypted drone footage

originally posted by: oldcarpy
a reply to: UmbertoEcco

That looks huge to you? May I suggest that you go to Specsavers?

you stick my car out there a quarter of a mile off and it looks like that.....called perspective...learned about it on Dora the Explorer...plus, Squidward uses it too.

Regarding drone safety and airports .. I wonder if it got so bad that in the future we saw airports equipped with lasers so they could zap the drones haha that would be awesome

a reply to: ThePeaceMaker

IAI is probably dancing for joy right now. I'm sure you're going to see an increase in their anti-drone systems.

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: ThePeaceMaker

IAI is probably dancing for joy right now. I'm sure you're going to see an increase in their anti-drone systems.

en.globes.co.il...

Ah I see what's happening here.. Israeli defence company creating a sales pitch by buzzing the airport thrn make a 20mil sale! Rafael defence company were behind this

How strange could all this get?

Multiple drone sightings shut down a major part of UK infrastructure, but, despite all the surveillance and monitoring equipment available at an airport, no one seems to be able to get a decent shot of it.

The police were considering shooting it down, but they were worried about the bullets? Or maybe they couldn't see it?

Then a couple, completely unrelated to the case, with rock solid alibis (the guy was actually working), get arrested, and are held for some 36 hours, before being released.

All the while there are strange goings on at other UK airports, weird messages like, 'an air traffic control fault'.

It sounds like the authorities are genuinely baffled. We really do have a UFO here.

a reply to: Macenroe82

wait... from that crap piece of only footage, you were able to know it was a drone and more to the point exactly what type it is?
ok...

a reply to: Midnite247

That wouldn't surprise me either.

Please look into the UFO incident that is still unfolding at the Gatwick international airport. Last week the military was called in due to over 200 sightings of an alleged "drone". However to this date no perpetrators were found operating drones and the most available drone tech only has a battery life of 30-35 minutes. Now the security services are claiming that no photo or video of the drone/s exists at all. Look into this guys, please. Even the media are starting to claim that something isn't adding up here. Unfortunately like most photos or videos of UFOs these people that took the original photos or videos released to the media only had potato cams. Looks like we're not the only ones that have a hard time catching pictures of these elusive unidentified flying objects. There were thousands of people at the airport that day. How are there no photos or videos clearly showing that there was a drone there especially in these modern times. This same question is asked all the time here on this forum as if its some kind of definite proof that UFOs could not possibly exist. But unidentified flying objects do exist. People mis identify flying objects all the time. Dear ladies and gentleman of the aliens and UFO forum I would submit to you that until we are shown clear photos and videos of drones all we can assume is that people saw an unidentified object that they mis-identified as a drone that was also flying. I use the term UFO in the truest sense of the word here in keeping to the agnostic ethos. People saw an object in the sky that was flying that has not yet been identified.

originally posted by: Mendoparanormal
There were thousands of people at the airport that day. How are there no photos or videos clearly showing that there was a drone there especially in these modern times.

Because unless you can fit a 300mm lens to a mobile phone(which you can't),there is no smartphone in the world that would be able to get a clear photo at that distance through a glass or plastic window of something that small.

originally posted by: Imagewerx

originally posted by: Mendoparanormal
There were thousands of people at the airport that day. How are there no photos or videos clearly showing that there was a drone there especially in these modern times.

Because unless you can fit a 300mm lens to a mobile phone(which you can't),there is no smartphone in the world that would be able to get a clear photo at that distance through a glass or plastic window of something that small.

Still, it's an airport, the staff should have access to decent surveillance and photographic equipment, and if they don't what's going on? Staff at an airport would be trained/experienced in observing the skies. It's not some amateur observing a weather balloon and so forth.

Fair enough, out of all those 100,000+ people at the airport, there are NO professional, travelling photographers with their kit with them, or amateur photographers with their kit with them, which although unlikely, is possible, but how much do we have to stretch it to say that an airport doesn't have the equipment to photograph the skies? Sounds like even more far fetched to me.

So everyone is really incompetent or there's something else going on. And that's part of the mystery at the moment

a reply to: Assemble

Airport camera systems are generally set up to watch the ramp and taxiways, with only a few looking up at something that might be flying nearby. And a lot of those cameras are old and cheap.

a reply to: Assemble

The staff that work outside at an airport are baggage handlers,fuel bowser drivers,marshallers and all of the other associated jobs,none of which involve being trained to observe the skies or having access to DSLR cameras with telephoto lenses.

The old viewing area on the roof of the South terminal at Gatwick has been shut for at least twenty years,so unless you take a walk along the perimeter road there is nowhere near to that or the North terminal to be able to take photos from.You can't even stand on the multi story car parks any more like you used to be able to to take photos when they were landing from the East.It was a cold Wednesday afternoon in December,so the chance of their being any spotters with cameras at the crash gates is pretty low.

One or two people might be incompetent,but as nothing on this scale has ever happened anywhere else in the world then it's difficult to be properly prepared for something like this.