All flights departing Heathrow Airport in London were briefly suspended on Tuesday following a drone sighting near the airport, lower than a month after one other drone incident shut down neighboring Gatwick International for 36 hours.
Departures were paused as a “precaution” shortly after 5 p.m. UK time, based on The Telegraph, with police responding to “reports of a sighting of a drone within the vicinity of Heathrow Airport.” Flights later resumed as normal at 6:15 p.m. local time, per the report.
A spokesperson for Heathrow, the UK’s busiest airport, told The Guardian:
“We’re currently responding to a drone sighting at Heathrow and are working closely with the Met police to forestall any threat to operational safety. As a precautionary measure, we’ve stopped departures while we investigate. We apologise to passengers for any inconvenience this will cause.”
The momentary pause on Heathrow’s runways comes just a number of weeks after a mysterious drone sighting stymied all air traffic at Gatwick Airport in the course of the height of holiday travel for roughly 36 hours. The incident prompted a response from police and military alike, although authorities armed with signal-jamming instruments were unable to thwart the rogue aircraft’s path because it canceled 1,000 flights and affected the travels of some 140,000 passengers.
The Gatwick drone episode proved confounding for various reasons, largely because authorities had no specific protocol for coping with the UAV in such a sensitive environment. UK police have since been given more extensive powers to cope with interloping drones, which includes the power to seize, land, and search them if deemed a threat.
Within the case of Gatwick’s drone debacle, no suspects have been charged, and authorities are contending with a considerable dearth of evidence pointing to potential culprits.