Gatwick airport suspends flights after reports of drones over runway | Hacker News Reader

Gatwick airport suspends flights after reports of drones over runway

theguardian.com

9 pointsNeedMoreTea9 comments

I love the fact that all news outlets are using the same 'photograph' of a drone in flight with a 747 in the background. Tineye reveals that this wire service image, first used when a drone was spotted near Gatwick in July 2017, is clearly a photomontage using a jumbo that was snapped landing at JFK in 2010.

I'm not saying this is a fake-moon-landing scenario, obviously it's real, but it would be great if someone could at least produce one photo or video of today's Gatwick drone actually doing its thing... (though now that I think about it, if Her Majesty's Govt wanted to create a diversion from the current political trainwreck, this would be a good way to go about it. If it turns out the presence of the perpetrator or drone can be blamed on EU free movement in any way, I'm pinning this whole thing on Rees-Mogg...)

I mean, it's cheaper and easier than pretty much any other method if you want to cause airport disruption. I'm surprised people haven't tried this already.

Not as cheap and easy as calling in a fake bomb threat. I Googled it and found a surprising number of articles about different incidents where airports were shut down this way... in several different cases, the articles identified the culprit as someone who was late to their flight and wanted to delay it! But that's a spur-of-the-moment decision, whereas bringing a drone requires planning. And other than that, what kind of motivation is there to disrupt an airport for disruption's sake? There's terrorism, but terrorists typically want to produce a body count, not just inconvenience.

> Not as cheap and easy as calling in a fake bomb threat.

But a lot safer, I guess? Relatively easy to identify who phoned in a bomb threat these days (absent a sensible person who manages to pick a public phone box uncovered by CCTV) whereas it's presumably a bit trickier to locate a drone pilot (especially since they can be ultra-mobile)

I imagine there's some gear that could track the drone controllers? Not sure exactly how that works.

And I'm surprised that major airports don't have counter-measures.

The vulnerability is huge, and not only for airports.

There's a pot of gold waiting for the right product.

If the number of incidents doesn't go over a particular number it is probably way cheaper to let the police deal with it. It's how we handle most "people can't be assholes" rules, after all.

A major airport has effectively closed down with 10,000+ passengers affected.

This is costing millions right now.

Then, one day a plane might actually be taken down by a drone during landing or take off.

I think we are far beyond "people can be assholes" territory.

Is ten years in prison the right product?

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