© AFP / Roslan Rahman
There's no easy way to prevent rogue drone pilots from causing disruptions at UK airports, transport secretary Chris Grayling has said. It means the chaos recently experienced by passengers at Gatwick and Heathrow may be repeated.
Currently, there is no "off the shelf solution" to the new problem, while the technologies that are now being developed are "very immature," Grayling told Sky News.
Drone disruptions have become a hot topic in the UK recently after two major airport incidents in London. Around 1,000 flights were canceled, affecting the travel plans of 140,000 people, after two unmanned aircraft hampered Gatwick's operations for two days in December. Heathrow had to hold plane departures for an hour last Tuesday after a drone was spotted in the vicinity of the airport.
Comment: Fines and licenses are typical bureaucratic solutions to a problem, but UK airports weren't able to track down the operators of the alleged drones and, with over 100 credible sightings reported at Gatwick, only one video of the 'drone' seems to have surfaced - granted, at nighttime in particular, this could be tricky. And so even after ordering
"several millions" of pounds worth of military anti-drone equipment the UK government has been forced to admit it is powerless, which is curious indeed.
For those incidents where it is verifiable that the problem is a drone - because the airport incidents were surrounded with
conflicting information - the UK should take its cue from Russia and look into training falcons that can hunt and intercept
drones.
Comment: That's why it's important to not become ideologically-possessed.