Drones cause holiday chaos at one of London's busiest airports
Source: Engadget
Drones spotted over the UK's second-busiest airport have halted flights for hours, heavily disrupting the holiday travel of tens of thousands of passengers. Flights at London's Gatwick airport currently can't take off or land, and airport authorities have said that 110,000 passengers on 760 flights are scheduled to fly today. The delays have been ongoing since yesterday evening, and though operations briefly resumed at around 3 AM, they were halted about an hour later when the drone was spotted again.
Two drones were spotted flying "over the perimeter fence and where the runway operates from," Airport operating chief Chris Woodroofe told BBC News. He condemned the "irresponsible" actions of the drone operators, saying it could take days for normal operations to resume at the airport's busiest time of the year.
Police in neighboring Sussex said there are no signs that the drone incident is terror related, but added that the activity is suspicious. "We are still getting sightings of the drone in and around the airfield," said the official in charge of the investigation, Justin Burtenshaw. "Each time we believe we get close to the operator the drone disappears and when we look to reopen the airfield the drone reappears, so I'm absolutely convinced it is a deliberate act to disrupt Gatwick airport."
Read more: Http://www.engadget.com/amp/2018/12/20/drone-delays-gatwick-airport/
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drones to become a nightmare sans exceedingly strict regulation. The exception was one DUer who apparently worked in the field and wasn't at all concerned about safety, invasion of privacy, or their unregulated use becoming a harassing nightmare for wildlife and air efforts to fight wildfires. I can't remember the DUer, but would love to know if they still feel the same. 
We were on a BOAC owned Scottish airline (Caledonian Airways). That was back in the days when plane hijacking was a "thing" and we went through a security line tantamount to what you see today with TSA, although back then they were just doing pat-downs and I don't think they even had magnetometers. In fact, just found this article that says the first airport magnetometer was installed in New Orleans in July 1970 - we went to London in November 1970.
I always wondered why the heck the media helped to perpetuate the "coolness" of "drones" (quadrocopters) because it ignored the fact that the hoodlums now had a new toy to disrupt on a large scale. And of course having them illegally used around airports is an example of a nightmare. 
