Drones Stop Planes at Heathrow This Time

A drone sighting temporarily brought flights at London’s Heathrow Airport to a standstill on Tuesday afternoon. The incident occurred just after 5 p.m. local time, with departures halted for an hour before resuming. The incident comes weeks after a drone sighting at London’s Gatwick Airport (LGW).

A drone sighting at London’s Heathrow Airport (LHR) temporarily brought departures to a halt at the facility late on Tuesday afternoon, the BBC reports. According to information released by London’s Metropolitan Police, the incident occurred at just after 5 p.m. local time.

Flights from LHR were grounded for approximately an hour before resuming, reports the outlet.

In a tweet, a spokesperson for the airport said that the move to temporarily suspend flights had been done as a “precautionary measure”.

“We continue to work with the Met Police on reports of drones at Heathrow. We are working with Air Traffic Control and the Met Police, and have resumed departures out of Heathrow after a short suspension. We will continue to monitor this and apologize to anyone that were affected,” the airport tweeted later on Tuesday evening.

The drone sighting at LHR comes barely a month after a sighting at London’s Gatwick Airport (LGW) brought the facility to a standstill for 36 hours, stranding over 100,000 passengers.

BBC cameraman Martin Roberts offered the outlet an eyewitness account of the incident, saying, “I could see, I’d say around 300 feet up, very bright, stationary flashing red and green lights…”.

“I could tell it was a drone – these things have got quite distinctive lights – not a helicopter. The lights were very close together. It was a very clear night and the object was stationary, it was turning very, very slightly. I could see it very clearly, I’d say for about four to five minutes,” he added.