Heathrow Airport temporarily suspended flights on Tuesday evening for an hour, due to the emergence of drones on its territory. The flights from the west London airport resumed after ensuring the safety of the airspace.
The Metropolitan Police, which is working on Heathrow Airport, said it was deploying “significant resources” to monitor the London hub airport after a drone was spotted shortly after 5 pm on Tuesday.
A Heathrow spokeswoman had said it was a “precautionary measure” to “prevent any threat to operational safety”. She added that the authorities are monitoring the situation and apologized to passengers affected by the disruption.
Passengers stuck at Heathrow expressed their frustration at having to wait to depart while the airport responded to the sighting.
Scotland Yard said a “full criminal investigation” had been launched into the incident – and that officers were among those to see the drone.
More than 140,000 passengers at Gatwick were affected during 36 hours of chaos between 19 and 21 December. About 1,000 flights were canceled there over three days due to the drone sightings.
Gatwick said last week that it had spent 5 million GBP to prevent future attacks. Heathrow also confirmed it would be buying systems to guard against drones.
Heathrow Airport is a major international airport near London, United Kingdom. Heathrow is the second busiest airport in the world by international passenger traffic, as well as the busiest airport in Europe by passenger traffic, and the seventh busiest airport in the world by total passenger traffic. It is one of six international airports serving Greater London. In 2017, it handled a record 78.0 million passengers, a 3.1% increase from 2016.
