Remember that meltdown that basically paralyzed air traffic at Gatwick airport in the UK during the busy holiday travel season in late 2018?
Well, the mystery as to who or what was behind the surreptitious drone flights that shut everything down is no closer to being solved and this is leading the more conspiracy theory oriented among us to assume something more nefarious going on behind the scenes.
This is what a report in London’s The Evening Standard is claiming and it is using a secret source that is allegedly close to the inner workings of Gatwick airport to support their assertion.
Apparently, police believe that the drone flights were managed by a “disgruntled” employee at the airport according to FStoppers.
The main advance supporting this, outside of the mysterious source, is that it seems like the drones knew where to fly around the airport so that they would not be easily caught.
This would require a somewhat intimate knowledge of Gatwick airport and the surrounding area or, as FStoppers quotes The Evening Standard: “[the drone pilot] knew the blind spots for it, where it could not be ‘hit'. It was clearly someone with really good knowledge of Gatwick, someone who had worked there.”
Probably one of the best aspects of this conspiracy theory is that it would mean that terrorists were not involved in the events at Gatwick as everyone initially believed.
Nonetheless, no matter who is behind it, it likely won’t ease the pressure on governments, drone manufacturers, and UAV pilots to comply with some regulatory and registration scheme of one type or another.
While the cause behind the Gatwick airport shut down remains a mystery, the amount of money it cost airlines and other services is not.
One thing is certain and that is that airports will probably take extensive measures to prevent this from happening again.
