Gatwick Airport Drone Incident

London Gatwick Airport lies about 50 km south of central London, near Crawley in West Sussex. In December 2018 it was the world's busiest single-runway airport.

Wednesday, 19 December 2018. About 9 pm. An off-duty airport security officer waited in the rain at a staff bus stop on site. The officer saw two drones. "One was hovering above a vehicle inside the airport complex, and the other was flying alongside the nearby perimeter fence."

The runway closed. By 9.30pm, six more sightings had been logged by the Gatwick control centre, five of them from police officers. The runway reopened at 03:01. It closed again at 03:45 after a new sighting. At 07:12 the drones were reported "back over the perimeter fence". Chief operating officer Chris Woodroofe said staff had seen "two drones", "over [the runway]... over the perimeter fence". The final confirmed sighting came at 17:00 on 21 December. That was 48 hours after the first report.

About 1,000 flights and 140,000 passengers were affected. The runway was shut for about 33 hours. It was the biggest disruption at Gatwick since the 2010 Icelandic volcano. The RAF deployed Leonardo's Falcon Shield system. Gatwick offered a £50,000 reward. It was never claimed.

On 21 December Sussex Police arrested Paul Gait and Elaine Kirk, a couple from Crawley. They were held for about 36 hours and released without charge. They said they felt "completely violated". Police later apologised and settled out of court for £200,000.

Operation Trebor drew in five police forces. Woodroofe later cited 170 credible sightings from 115 people. Sussex Police counted 129 reports, 109 from credible witnesses. The activity came in groupings on 12 separate occasions, each lasting 7 to 45 minutes. Six times, two drones were seen operating simultaneously. Police and the airport said the operator seemed able to see what was happening on the runway. Police called an insider a "credible line" of inquiry.

Yet nothing was ever captured. No photographs or videos were provided to police. The RAF confirmed the absence of any "hostile or malicious" drone activity. Police helicopter crews searched until 31 December and did not sight any drones. The case closed on 27 September 2019 with "no further realistic lines of enquiry". Freedom of information requests put the total cost at £998,077.

On 23 December, Detective Chief Superintendent Jason Tingley said: "We cannot discount the possibility that there may have been no drone at all." Photographer Eddie Mitchell flies drones two or three times a week. He photographed white, green and red lights hovering above the airport. His images showed the Sussex Police helicopter. "God help us because others will have no idea," he said. Others suggested birds, bags, balloons, lanterns or distant aircraft. Ian Hudson pointed out that rain grounds most drones.

Dr David Clarke frames Gatwick as folklore, a "visual epidemic". He compares it to the phantom helicopter wave over northern England in 1973 and 1974. Hudson took his freedom of information fight to the First-tier Tribunal. The ICO reprimanded Sussex Police and the Ministry of Defence. Airport exclusion zones widened from 1 km to 5 km, and counter-drone systems spread. As Gary Mortimer put it, Gatwick became "the stick that launched a thousand counter drone systems."