Unique AvGeek Moments: The Time Gatwick Got Shut Down By A Toy

I suppose the story to this starts the day before I arrived at Gatwick for my short flight over to Jersey. Late in the evening of 19th of December 2018 Gatwick, one of the world's busiest single runway airports was shut down due to drone sightings. This shutdown continued throughout the whole of the following day, with the airport eventually re-opening during the evening of the 20th, leading to what we thought was the end of the drone sightings.

Happily I arrived at the airport the following evening for my flight over to Jersey, with the airport operating just like normal, albeit with the South Terminal quieter than I think I can ever remember it, with the British Airways check-in desks almost being deserted of all passengers. 

Through security we made it and from there we went down in to one of the quieter corners away from the main central area that we have found during our many trips now down to Gatwick. Once there after a short walk down to some of the gate areas to look out of the windows (as an AvGeek how can you not) it became clear that trouble was brewing. Through social media it became apparent that Gatwick had been shut down again, due to another sighting of the pesky drone that had been causing chaos during the day before.

Turkish Airlines 737 almost ready for push-back at about the moment the news about the shut down broke.

Thankfully we had got the jump on the people in the rest of the terminal, we no information coming through the terminal, and with the prospect of a long night stuck at Gatwick looking likely, I was able to get the jump on the take away sandwich game, sneaking into boots as the first announcement of suspended operations came through the speakers of the terminal. 

As is typical in these situations, chaos naturally followed the collective sigh of everyone in the terminal. The line for airline desks, hidden away in the corner of the terminal, grew snacking around the whole of the ground floor of the terminal, whilst at the front those who could not find the end of it just turned the very front of the line into a mob of people. Meanwhile with no-one being permitted to come through security and people being sent away from their gates, the planes, sat at the end of the runway, patiently waiting to takeoff were spun around and sent back to the gates that they had come from. Meanwhile whilst we were sitting in our quiet corner of the terminal, oblivious to the chaos, smugly eating our boots sandwiches, watching more and more red appear on the flight board, I set up our centre of operations, laptop, tablet and phone all out plugged in at the wall, watching every website and flight tracker attentively, tweeting frantically. Eventually our aircraft due to land at Gatwick, gave up waiting and turned away from Gatwick, heading to Stansted instead, at which point our night seemed like it was going to be even longer.

Eventually after an hour of suspended operations hope was given to us, the Aurigny Embraer took off, hope at last, but was it to be too late to save us, our aircraft was by this point on the approach path to Stansted. Were they to land and drag out our miserable night out even further. Thankfully they were not, instead leaving the approach path, turning back towards Gatwick, lucky for us we were going to get out that night. 

Gatwick airport however still had other ideas about that. With the airport still recovering from the chaos that had just been caused, the flight board for our flight refused to update. At the last minute however, we got out gate, as well as the message, flight closed. Following the stampede made up of the passengers for our flight we made it down to the gate, where we were greated by gate agents oblivious to the information on the flight boards, ready to tell us to wait, boarding will start in a minute.

Our Plane following our arrival in Jersey later that evening. 

In the end we reached Jersey later that evening, without a huge delay in the context of things, even if it did mean we were a little late for the dinner we were supposed to have that evening when we got there.