Passengers stranded at Gatwick Airport wait for updates on their travel options on Thursday.
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One of the UK’s busiest airports suspended or diverted all flights after drones were seen over its airfield.
The disruption at Gatwick Airport, which is 30 miles south of London, started around 9 p.m. local time Wednesday after a pair of drones were spotted, according to the BBC. Gatwick is Britain’s second busiest airport.
The runway remained closed until 3 a.m. and then was shut down again 45 minutes later after “a further sighting of drones.” It was still closed as of Thusday afternoon, and police are hunting for the drones’ operator, Chris Woodroofe, Gatwick’s chief operating officer, told the BBC.
“We have had within the last hour another drone sighting so at this stage we are not open and I cannot tell you what time we will open,” he said, noting that it’ll take a number of days to recover from this incident.
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Sussex Police don’t think the drones are part of a terror attack, but they’re seeking the public’s help to identify the operator and they suspect that devices are of “industrial specification.”
It’s illegal to fly a drone within 1 kilometer (0.6 mile) of an airport or airfield boundary, and you can’t fly it above 120 meters (400 feet) where the likelihood of an aircraft hitting it increases.
Around 110,000 passengers on 760 flights were due to use the airport on Thursday, Gatwick told the BBC, and some overnight flights were diverted to Paris and Amsterdam.
“There is significant disruption at Gatwick today as a result of what appears to be a deliberate attempt to disrupt flights,” the airport said in an updated Thursday release.
“We are working hard with our airlines to get information to passengers but would advise anyone booked onto flights from Gatwick, or meeting arriving passengers, not to travel to the airport without checking the status of the flight with their airline or on our website first.”
Gatwick didn’t immediately respond to a request for further comment.
In August, Gatwick was forced to post flight information on white boards after its digital screens failed due to an IT glitch.
First published at 2:59 a.m. PT and updated as the situation develops.
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