Factom Drone article21 Dec 2018 21:46
STEWART: Runways were closed at 9 p.m. Wednesday after two drones were initially cited. It was briefly reopened at 3 a.m. but only for 45 minutes. The drone was spotted again.
Police say the devices are buzzing over the runways to intentionally cause disruption, impacting 120,000 passengers who were struggling to fathom why anyone would do this.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What you're doing you're making everyone's life a misery. I'm sure that was what their intention was in the first place.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I was like, why, why do they do it.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I feel like this is the prank. I feel like people just want to be cool and be on the news.
STEWART: Some people have been stranded here since last night.
CHRIS WOODROOFE, CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER, GATWICK AIRPORT: This is deliberate act. This is someone who is seeking to disrupt those passengers, and it's so disappointing that you've got a perpetrator of a drone around there punishable by five years imprisonment, who has now disrupted 120,000 passengers' journeys this close to Christmas.
STEWART: Drones present a major risk to aircraft flying into an engine or a windscreen could have catastrophic consequences, which is why in the U.K. it's illegal to fly a drone above 120 meters and within one kilometer of an airfield of airport.
But tracking the perpetrators is proving difficult.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So, obviously this is an ongoing investigation and incident. There have been a number of sightings of a drone or drones today which we are investigating. We're working very closely with Gatwick. We got a number of resources deployed in order to try and find who is responsible and bring this to a resolution effectively.
STEWART: Police believed the drones used today are of an industrial specification which means they could have a long-range and may not even require an operator.
LEWIS WHYLD, DRONE EXPERT: This is a huge problem for the civil aviation authority. We have companies using the blockchain Factom to create a live map of all drone flights in the U.K. But in the event of a rogue operator, then some kind of physical interaction will have to take place, the drone will have to be destroyed or captured because you can use signals jammers but they have it fly by wave points or artificial intelligence and so they just wouldn't work.
So, the only way to be sure would be to knock it out of the sky really.
STEWART: The U.K.'s aviation regulator like many around the world, have been looking to increase drone regulation. And for the passengers trying to travel to and from Gatwick day, that can't happen soon enough.
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