Flights grounded at Heathrow following drone sighting

Heathrow, United Kingdom - October 4, 2013: British Airways airplanes at their gate at the new Terminal 5.

All flights from London’s Heathrow Airport were grounded for an hour on Tuesday (local time) when another airport drone sighting was reported.

This comes after an illegal drone ‘raid’ forced London’s Gatwick airport to close in the lead up to Christmas.

It is estimated that 140,000 people had their flights disrupted at the time.

Reports indicate both Heathrow and Gatwick responded to the threat by ordering several million pounds of military-grade anti-drone defences and Heathrow said earlier this month it was working closely with authorities and looking at relevant tech to combat the threat.

a traveler waiting for a plane at airport departure hall on a rainy day.

Scotland Yard confirmed it had first received reports of a drone sighting near Heathrow Airport at about 5:05pm local time.

“We are responding to a drone sighting at Heathrow,” Heathrow airport said, according to the ABC.

“As a precautionary measure, we have stopped departures while we investigate. We apologise to passengers for any inconvenience this may cause.”

According to SMH, several flights scheduled to fly to Australia were due out of Heathrow at the time of the disruptions, including British Airways flight BA015, Qantas’ QF2 and the codeshare with Emirates flight QF8006 bound for Dubai.

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