Hang on, you are trying to make out that whatever has been flying over Gatwick all night (on and off as obviously needs charging/replacing etc.) is not a drone?
It's quite clear that this is a deliberate act to cause as much disruption as possible. It's only a matter of time before there is a serious incident involving a drone and an aircraft, whether it be accidental or deliberate.
Yes I'm saying I'd like to see evidence of the drone rather than someone seeing something in the sky and assuming it was a drone (which is what all BALPA members have been told to do), plus as I said, it was raining, hard, at 9pm last night, drones don't fly in the rain unless you make very advanced technical changes to them that are frankly far beyond the ability of average Joe.
Seriously think about it for a minute, most drones on average fly for a maximum of 30 minutes, most idiots buy their drones from Argos and the only option there is DJI, all DJI drones come with geofencing which again, unless you know what you are doing, is virtually impossible to defeat, the geofencing is two fold, if you fly near Gatwick the drone will land itself about 2 miles away (DJI geofencing is stricter than the law) and if within the red zone, the craft will not take off, period, average Joe would not know how to over-ride it, and it is very difficult to defeat, placing foil over the sensor simply puts the drone into manual mode, which most people don't have the skill set to fly in.
So if this "drone" turns out to be a consumer DJI product (because all drone near misses are DJI products even though DJI always turn over flight data to the authorities, see the New York collision for example), then I call horseshit on this sighting until I see a video or photo of the craft itself because knowing the incompetence of Gatwick and the authorities, if it was an actual drone, this was probably a commercial flight that didn't tell ATC, like what happened the last time Gatwick got closed (yeah they don't make that public because the last shutdown was caused by a BBC commercial flyer trying to film the immigration center, but that doesn't fit the narrative so doesn't get mentioned).
So considering all of that, if you'd spent £1000+ on a drone, would the first thing you'd do is go to Gatwick and fly it? Last night they were saying there were four circling the airport together, now it's two, tomorrow it'll be one, and in three months the airprox report will be released revealing it was a ground worker who saw a drone a mile away at the end of the runway, utter bullshit, you can't even see a drone a few hundred meters away if you don't know what you're looking for.
So yes, I'm calling bullshit on this until I see actual physical evidence of the drone, there has been far too many "drone sightings" recently that have turned out to be bin bags, birds and even other fucking planes for these people to be taken seriously anymore without actual verifiable evidence, I know 90% of the flyers in the area because we're all members of the same club, and I can assure you not one of them is stupid enough to do something like this.
However, if it does turn out to be the case of a drone, then I do fully support the authorities and actively encourage them to throw the book at the pilot, the law as it stands gives them ample power to deal with the pilot (unlimited fine + five years in jail) without having to bring in further draconian regulations, the law is already very very strict, so yes, go for it, but because there has been so many Tom Thumb's crying wolf over the last year, nobody outside of the general public, like you, believes any of these reports anymore.
