Heathrow flights disrupted by yet another drone

Enlarge / Now that every US carrier has retired its 747s, if you want to fly one, your best bet is with British Airways, which still operates 36 of them, many on routes to the US. Here are 11, seen at Heathrow’s Terminal 5 in 2013.

Just a few weeks after London’s Gatwick Airport was shut down by repeated drone sightings within the airport’s airspace, Heathrow Airport had to suspend flights due to its own drone air traffic. A spokesperson for Heathrow said in a statement to the press, “As a precautionary measure, we have stopped departures while we investigate. We apologize to passengers for any inconvenience this may cause.”

As of 1pm Eastern US time, flights coming into Heathrow were in a holding pattern around the airport, based on data from the flight tracking site FlightRadar24.com. Departures were suspended for about an hour but have now resumed. Police were called in to investigate. Via the airport’s Twitter account, a spokesperson said, “We continue to work with the Met Police on reports of drones at Heathrow. We are working with Air Traffic Control and the Met Police and have resumed departures out of Heathrow after a short suspension. We will continue to monitor this and apologize to anyone that were affected.’

Ars will update this story as more details become available.