The Gatwick Drone Incident - The Drone That Wasn't There
Originally published on April 27th, 2024 on Cohost (RIP)
Drones are well-tread ground in the world of the paranormal- since the earliest, crudest remote control systems were strapped to a set of wings, they became simple explanations for a litany of unidentified flying objects. As the technology matured this only fit better, with simple RC planes giving way to quadcopters able to move in ways previously attributed only to impossible alien thrusters. Now UFOs anywhere, not just on the outskirts of military installations, could be easily discounted as your rich neighbor’s kid strapping pie tins and LEDs to a drone.
However, I think it’s far more interesting when drones themselves- with no UFO airs- are the centerpiece of anomalous incidents. Today, we’ll pull from the archives and discuss the first of two drone-related incidents
THE DRONE THAT WASN’T THERE - THE GATWICK DRONE INCIDENT
“Mass hysteria”, or “mass psychogenic illness (MPI)” as it’s now properly known, is the name given to the cause of purely psychological illnesses that usually spread quickly through close knit groups. Widely associated with “outbreaks” of nausea, dizziness, skin irritation and rashes, involuntary movement, and hallucinations, it’s reached the mainstream a few times, from the political brouhaha of Havana Syndrome, to historical tales of dancing plagues and meowing convents. Over five years ago now, an incident, now mostly recognized as an instance of MPI, briefly ground the UK’s 2nd largest airport to a halt at the peak of the holiday season- the Gatwick Drone Incident
The timeline is thus; shortly after getting off work at 9 PM, an airport security officer is waiting for a bus home, and spots a pair of drones over Gatwick airport- one following a vehicle, and another following the airport’s perimeter. He calls this in, and within minutes, the UK’s second busiest airport grinds to a halt. Police and airport security begin patrolling the airport grounds, and by 9:30, six more sightings have been logged. By midnight, an hour has passed without a sighting, and officials move to reopen the airport- and then, suddenly, another sighting, and everything shuts down again. This pattern repeats through the early morning. At 9:30 the next morning, additional police arrive, this time bringing both helicopters and their own drones to aid in the search, undoubtedly polluting the pool of eyewitness reports. That evening, a military anti-drone system is delivered, and by 10 PM, it comes online, and detects nothing of substance, and Gatwick reopens for good in the early hours of December 21st.
The incident itself ends there- after the morning of December 21st passes, it becomes largely a story of police incompetence and dead leads. A man who works on model helicopters, not drones, is falsely accused, raided by the cops, and then slandered by the tabloids, ultimately tacking another £200,000 of settlement onto the investigation’s ballooning costs. Doubts quickly arise, but the cops hold steadfast to the claim a real, physical drone was at the heart of the shutdown, even after they closed the investigation in September 2019, many months and £790,000 later. Seemingly at no point did any other reasonable explanation- that the initial reporter, on windy, dark, rainy night had misidentified a million different pieces of debris or normal equipment as a drone, or that the continued reports were effectively useless in the face of the police deploying their own helicopters and drones, were even considered. Knowledgeable hobbyists and later industry veterans would also point out the actions of the claimed “drone” would be on the bleeding edge of drone ability, requiring significantly modified drones to have multiple battery changes done without notice, on top of incredible luck to operate them in poor conditions without a crash. Most damningly, despite over a hundred “credible” sightings, not one clear, identifiable photo of the drone was to be found, not from witnesses’ phones, not on any of the airport's innumerable security cameras, nothing.
In retrospect, the supposed Gatwick drone sightings are a clear example of MPI- one shaky report blooming into a paranoia-fueled terror that falls apart under scrutiny. Yet the effects are very real- 140,000 passengers had important holiday travel disrupted, and the hysteria of Gatwick paved the way for tighter drone regulations the following year.