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Gatwick closed (mod note post 1)

Mebuntu

LGW has been closed for some time. Diversions in progress.

Mod Note added 23/12/2018:

This is not the Conspiracy Theories forum, nor is it After Hours. Posters who do not come here often are asked to read the charter. Conspiracy theory posts are not acceptable here.

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Tenzor07

dhaughton99 wrote: »

Where are you seeing that. Sky news says last one spotted at 9.

Not on the News channels yet afaik

robinph

If it's a local protest group then they will presumably be well able to hide from the authorities, but they also have to realise that whatever it is they are complaining about disturbing their peace at home is all irrelevant now as their new home will be significantly less luxurious to what they are used to and with a far less desirable view our of the "window".

AGC

They have marksmen ready to go by the look of things

Closed till 16.00

zell12

Closed until 4pm

Tabnabs

Lets hope they don't miss!

Du3B8ekWkAAwrA_.jpg:large

Idbatterim

can they not get their own and follow the drone? I wonder what the punishment will be if they are caught, unlike this total banana republic, they dont mess around over there...

AndyBoBandy

Hearing on Sky News that basically every time everything appears to be clear, and they are preparing to resume flight operations, the drone(s) reappear on the scene!!

Somebody said it earlier, but Economic Terrorism!! The cost of today will most likely be in the 10's of millions, if not more

Mebuntu

Two more Ryanair DUB-LGW flights have flown to STN instead. FR112 and FR114. Lucky folk.

seamus

As people have said, they've probably been delaying action in the hope that they can track the drones back to the source.

"Economic terrorism" is just a buzzword. This is someone trying to make a deliberate point, but isn't a psychopath, they're not trying to kill anyone.

Maybe they're trying to show people what Gatwick will be like on 30th March if Brexit is allowed to happen

Irish Steve wrote: »

The only thing capable of taking out such a drone will be a very directed Laser style device that will either overload the internal electronics, or cause significant damage to the mechanical parts of the device and render it incapable of continuing to fly, but if such devices are available, they are not being widely talked about, and are certainly not being deployed to the airport operators. Another possible option is to have a directional radio beam that will block GPS signals, but that will only disrupt the navigation of the device, not prevent it from continuing to fly. The problem with disrupting the GPS system to take out a drone is that there are then major problems for aircraft in the area, as they are very likely to also be relying on GPS signals for their navigational accuracy, so for obvious safety reasons, the airspace has to be cleared before a take down system can be used.

Anti-drone drones are really the only feasible option. Any ground defence would be insanely expensive to develop at that accuracy.

Another part of the problem is that drones are cheap in the grand scheme of things. An individual does not have the funds to develop an actual aircraft of their own. But with 20 grand and a bit of technical knowledge, the array of things you could do with a quadcopter is huge.

The technology exists at the moment to develop one that can operate completely autonomously (i.e. giving off no radio signals), does not appear on radar and can travel 150km/h for up to an hour. Thankfully the potential for that drone to actually do anything when it reaches its destination is very limited. But as the price drops, their use for nefarious purposes will increase; not just travel disruption, but surveillance and criminal damage.

Smaller radar-style systems will need to be developed to keep track of drone traffic at lower altitudes in built-up areas.

realdanbreen

Idbatterim wrote: »

can they not get their own and follow the drone? I wonder what the punishment will be if they are caught, unlike this total banana republic, they dont mess around over there...

I wouldn't be too quick to paint us as a banana republic compared to our 'betters' across the water. It's 1.30pm now and still not sorted. It is kind of scary when you think that highly weaponised countries like Britain or the USA are unable to deal with situations like these. I mean a few amateur psychos were able to crash a plane right in to the heart (Pentagon) of American security on 9/11.

robinph

Idbatterim wrote: »

can they not get their own and follow the drone? I wonder what the punishment will be if they are caught, unlike this total banana republic, they dont mess around over there...

5 years for flying a drone near and airport.

But that was this morning, by now I would expect them to have dreamt up a bunch of additional charges or they would do something like charge them separately for each time the drone took off to ramp up the sentence to multiples of that.

Irish Steve

seamus wrote: »

Anti-drone drones are really the only feasible option. Any ground defence would be insanely expensive to develop at that accuracy.

Another part of the problem is that drones are cheap in the grand scheme of things. An individual does not have the funds to develop an actual aircraft of their own. But with 20 grand and a bit of technical knowledge, the array of things you could do with a quadcopter is huge.

Indeed. The scary aspect is that you can cut your 20 grand to closer to 2 grand, that will get you the necessary components and electronics that will build into a drone that's capable of being a nuisance. There's not a lot of complex tech savvy needed any more either, pretty much all of the software needed to get the thing in the air is out there as shareware or freeware, and it's very capable in terms of what it can do.

This event will have come as a very unwelcome wake up call to a number of groups of people,. and the response will be significant, but I doubt we will hear too much about it for quite some time, as they won't want to admit to exactly what their capability is going forward, but I think we can be pretty confident that some very high level discussions will be happening over the next while.

Working class heroes

It’s black ops!
When all this is sorted it will be used to demonstrate what the airports will be like as a result of a hard Brexit.
It’ll focus the minds in relation to the Brexit vote in the HoC this coming January.

Maybe I’ve had too much coffee today.

trellheim

Its frustrating ... but you just cannot take the chance. When they find the perp they will be made an example of I would say with some severely stiff penalties ... like the costs of the disruption.

Idbatterim

I wouldn't be too quick to paint us as a banana republic compared to our 'betters' across the water. It's 1.30pm now and still not sorted.

in terms of the response to it, I dont think we can comment much, I'm sure they know what they are doing there, this seems a bit unprecedented and I am sure they will be ready and far better prepared if it happens again. What I am mainly referring to, is the sentence that will be given out if they are apprehended, a few people dressed up over there for halloween and were prosecuted for hate crimes. Over here the guardai would laugh at you if you rang up to report people in "fancy dress"

AGC

trellheim wrote: »

Its frustrating ... but you just cannot take the chance. When they find the perp they will be made an example of I would say with some severely stiff penalties ... like the costs of the disruption.

Unless it's Richard Branson doing it I don't think they will be covering costs

Tenzor07

Dreamliner parked up at the Ryanair pier

seamus

trellheim wrote: »

Its frustrating ... but you just cannot take the chance. When they find the perp they will be made an example of I would say with some severely stiff penalties ... like the costs of the disruption.

We don't do that in Europe, mainly because it's pointless. Order an individual to repay €100m in lost flight costs and he can immediately declare bankruptcy and walk away from the debt a few years later without having paid anything. It's barely even a punishment.

This is one of those incidents that will be used to tighten up laws and introduce real penalties for interfering with aviation traffic. Up to now you might be able to run/drive onto a runway and delay a flight by an hour. So the penalty was relatively small.
Now someone has managed to shut down a major airport for a day, which is a whole other ball game.

Idbatterim

Now someone has managed to shut down a major airport for a day, which is a whole other ball game.

they have managed to shut down the second busiest airport in the uk!

robinph

Won't make a whole lot of difference to the overall number of passengers, but the train companies seem to be allowing people to travel using their plane ticket for long distance trains. Only going to help the few flights to Edinburgh and a couple of other places really as there are not a lot of UK internal routes. But if the airlines don't run internal flights for a couple of days then it would free up some planes and landing slots to clear the backlog of passengers over the next few days to more far flung places.

If you were due to fly to Scotland/ Manchester/ Cardiff then surely you'd have already got on the train anyway by now though.

robinph

Idbatterim wrote: »

they have managed to shut down the second busiest airport in the uk!

They were claiming it as the busiest single runway airport in the world this morning, which sounds plausible.

AGC

robinph wrote: »

They were claiming it as the busiest single runway airport in the world this morning, which sounds plausible.

Second behind Mumbai I think

4068ac1elhodqr

In this age of space travel and hypersonic missiles, how hard can it be to detect the localised source of the RF signal of the drone enthusiasts?

Likely a couple of school kids who got a fancy semi-pro drone for chrissymass.

basill

Marjorie Sparse Sternum wrote: »

In this age of space travel and hypersonic missiles, how hard can it be to detect the localised source of the RF signal of the drone enthusiasts?

Likely a couple of school kids who got a fancy semi-pro drone for chrissymass.

Read the earlier posts. Likely a commercial drone that is programmed and flying solo. No need to be in contact with an operator once its airborne. Now following it back to where it gets recharged is probably where the solution lies if they can maintain eyes on them.

AGC

Mebuntu wrote: »

Two more Ryanair DUB-LGW flights have flown to STN instead. FR112 and FR114. Lucky folk.

I know Ryanair have a massive hub there but following some tweets others airlines that have diverted to Stansted things are not going well. Stuck on the aircraft for over 4 hours with pax starting to get abusive and police being called.

robinph

basill wrote: »

Read the earlier posts. Likely a commercial drone that is programmed and flying solo. No need to be in contact with an operator once its airborne. Now following it back to where it gets recharged is probably where the solution lies if they can maintain eyes on them.

Think it was on the Sky News feed that they just had a comment from some drone "expert" saying it probably wasn't a particularly high tech model or they would be able to track it better and she reckoned it would be cheapo toy models.

Think she probably doesn't understand that the software could be hacked to remove any geofencing.

Edit: Was actually on the BBC News feed:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-england-sussex-46564814?ns_mchannel=social&ns_source=twitter&ns_campaign=bbc_live&ns_linkname=5c1ba400ae4345065e478def%26Gatwick%20drone%20%27likely%20to%20be%20a%20toy%27%262018-12-20T14%3A17%3A08.808Z&ns_fee=0&pinned_post_locator=urn:asset:300c0636-9b0a-4656-89ee-05a5f3d5ad5f&pinned_post_asset_id=5c1ba400ae4345065e478def&pinned_post_type=share

zell12

An airline source has told the BBC that flights are currently cancelled until at least 19:00
A total of 722 flights were scheduled to and from Gatwick today across all airlines.

Mebuntu

Just been checking Ryanair's Gatwick - Dublin flights today. Funnily enough, they are showing as cancelled on their website but all bar one so far appear on Flightradar as having operated (or are currently operating) from Stansted. Example FR115 over MAN at 14.55.

seamus

basill wrote: »

Now following it back to where it gets recharged is probably where the solution lies if they can maintain eyes on them.

If it's going back. With a reasonable amount of forward thinking, you could decide that programming the drone to just fall out of the sky when it's done might cost you €250 each time but it's a damn sight better than going to prison

The suggestion earlier was that a couple of people were doing this, but there's just as many reasons to believe it's a single individual with 10 or 20 drones ready to fly.

Drive around the vicinity of the airport, drop drones off within a 1km radius of the airport, programmed to take off at a specific time and fly to a specific GPS co-ordinate (i.e. the airport) fly around in random patterns for a while and when you have about 2% battery left, take off in some random direction and keep flying until you drop out of the air.

If someone came to me and asked me the best way to achieve this level of chaos, that's what I'd advise.

Edit: I would like to note at this juncture for the Gardai in attendence that I have not been in the UK for a couple of years and have never actually seen a drone in the flesh, never mind write code for one

joe40

The americans would have launched jets and shot it down by now.
Seriously though this level of disruption achieved in a relatively simple way won't go unnoticed.