Gatwick Airport delays: Pair arrested after thousands more passengers left stranded during third day of drone chaos

Two people have been arrested in connection with the "criminal use of drones" which has caused widespread disruption to flights at Gatwick Airport.

Sussex Police said the arrests were made on Friday night, but the force did not disclose the ages or genders of those detained, nor the locations of where the arrests took place.

The arrests came after thousands of passengers trying to fly out of the airport for Christmas were hit by delays for the third day running.

Although “military measures” were put in place to prevent further disruption, the drones returned on Friday evening, dashing hopes of a return to normal service as all flights were suspended once more.

Before the arrests Sussex Police said it was “deploying significant resources to seek and locate the drone and its operator” following the sighting.

Assistant chief constable Steve Barry said: “In terms of the motivation, there’s a whole spectrum of possibilities, from the really high-end criminal behaviour that we’ve seen, all the way down to potentially, just individuals trying to be malicious, trying to disrupt the airport."

Transport secretary Chris Grayling said that the drone disruption at Gatwick was “unprecedented anywhere in the world”.

Flights were resumed again on Friday evening but several services were either delayed or cancelled. A Rwandair wide-bodied Airbus flew back to Brussels, while easyJet once again suffered the highest number of diversions. Passengers on the budget airline’s flight from Turin ended up in Birmingham; Copenhagen and Nice travellers went to Southend, while Luton was the unintended destination for the flights from Tenerife and Lanzarote.

A spokeswoman for Gatwick Airport said that the temporary closure was “a precautionary measure” while they investigated the new sighting.

“The military measures we have in place at the airport have provided us with reassurance necessary that it is safe to re-open our airfield,” she said.

The news the drone had returned was met with disbelief and frustration by passengers still camped out at the airport.

Ana Trinanes, a 49-year-old mother-of-two, was told that her rescheduled 8.55pm flight had been delayed, having been at Gatwick since 6am on Thursday.

“Oh my god, I want to cry, it is unbelievable – again,” she said. “It’s just a small drone against all the police and the army and everyone. It’s unbelievable. At this moment I’m shocked, I don’t know if I want to cry or I want to laugh, I don’t know what to do.”

While passengers battled to find alternative routes to their destinations, urgent discussions were going on between the airport executives and the government – with the Ministry of Defence and Home Office joining talks with the Department for Transport.

Specialist military equipment was deployed to provide what one source told The Independent was “complete confidence that any drone incursions can be dealt with without danger to the public”

Before the arrests, a £10,000 reward for information about the drone operators was offered by Lord Michael Ashcroft, the former deputy chairman of the Conservative Party.

Brian Strutton, general secretary of the British Airline Pilots’ Association (Balpa) said he was confident the government would increase the exclusion zone around airports, and added: “This incident also reinforces the need for registration of drones and licensing of operators so that the police can track and trace drones which are being flown dangerously or irresponsibly and for the industry to invest in technology which can detect drones and stop them from being flown near airports and aircraft.”

Privately a number of aviation security experts have expressed relief that the Gatwick fiasco has exposed the weaknesses without causing harm – beyond ruining the Christmas travel plans of 150,000 people.

As well as 161 cancelled flights on Friday, representing around 30,000 passengers, there were some prodigious delays: British Airways 777s were 24 hours late in from the Maldives and Mauritius, which arguably are more pleasant places to wait for a delayed flight than the floor of an airport – which is where many stranded passengers spent the night.

Travellers whose homes are outside the UK told their stories with bewilderment and sadness: a mother with her children were on their third day of being camped out at Costa Coffee in the Arrivals area, with no sign when they might finally be able to reach their home in Morocco.

A young woman named Or – Hebrew for “light” – said her flight to Tel Aviv via Kiev was cancelled on Thursday evening and that she had failed to sleep in a chair in the terminal. She had re-booked via Amsterdam to reach Israel.

For Ryanair passengers, Stansted was the new Gatwick – the Irish airline simply moved all its flights from Sussex to Essex, where it could be certain of take off and landing slots.

Gatwick’s busiest day of the winter is expected to be Sunday 23 December. It remains to be seen whether the hopes of yet more travellers will be dashed by further closures of the world’s busiest runway.

Additional reporting by Press Association