How drones shut an airport? Lessons for us

Last week the Gatwick Airport at London was shut for nearly three days. The reason – unidentified drones! It seems to be unbelievable but it is true that one of the busiest airports in Europe was shut for business due to drones.

It appears to be a scene from a sci-fi movie where certain powers from a different planet or Galaxy might have attacked the earth and suddenly there are certain unidentified flying objects, UFOs – in this case, these objects could be identified as drones, but their owners or persons who were controlling them were unknown – threatening the world's existence. Lack of explanation of the presence of these drones is worrying and that is why there has been tremendous confusion and chaos resulting in the closure of the airport for 3 days with an adverse impact on more than 1,000 flights and having about 1,40,000 people stranded, waiting for their flights in the festive season of Christmas and New Year, and spending time at the airport or in the nearby hotels with great deal of uncertainty.

It is really the limitation of the administrative institutions that something as innocuous as a drone – which appears to be a simple device, very benign in operation, and is usually used by people as a hobby and passion or by certain professionals for taking photographs and for collecting data – can be a source of creating so much confusion that business worth billions of dollars is impacted and schedule of so many people can get affected.

This incident has truly caused a lot of embarrassment to a country like the United Kingdom, which is not able to control something man-made as drones – which are not even birds, who do have a mind of their own – which are expected to be controlled by certain human beings or by using some artificial intelligence.

Apparently, they can work on their own but that they do as programmed and according to the algorithm prepared for a certain purpose.

There have been instances of the aircraft getting damaged due to bird hits and that is precisely the reason why the presence of a drone – which weighs about a kilogram or a maximum of 2 kilogram – can be dangerous for the aircraft engines and may cause damage to the windshield of the cockpit, however, this threat is only at low levels of flying, that is when an aircraft is taking off and landing, as the drones are usually flying at a low level. This is the reason.

This issue has given vindication to the basic understanding that technology precedes and law follows. The technology of drones has been there for certain years and is now easily available. The technology of drones has been available, both in the laboratory and in the market, for several years and is now easily available inexpensively. Most of the people pursue drone flying as their hobby or might be using them for certain professional purposes, however, it also makes it possible for certain mischievous persons to create a nuisance, and just use the drones to cause disturbance to the airport. It might be giving them some sadistic pleasure and the satisfaction of achieving something. If it is doable with all the safety measures taken by the airport authorities, and advanced security technology used by the government for the security of the people – which has been clearly demonstrated and proved by the recent events – it is frightening and erodes the confidence of the global traveller in the capability of security and intelligence agencies in a first world country like the United Kingdom.

Several legal issues crop up: right from the compensation to be awarded to the passengers, to the accountability of the concerned airport and government officials, to the ticklish issues related to international protocols about airlines and jurisdictional issues, and so on. In India, we can take the lessons regarding airport safety and security. New technologies like drones are good, but only in a regulated form. There has to be a clear balance between safety and technology promotion, and safety must come first. Besides keeping the airport area clean – to avoid bird hits – drones must be highly regulated, as is the case with paper lanterns, especially during festive season.

The author is a professor at IIM-A, 
akagarwal@iima.ac.in