Drones paralyze British airport, grounding Christmas travellers

LONDON - Britain sent troops to its second-biggest airport after an unprecedented attempt to cripple Christmas travel with large drones forced all flights to be cancelled on Thursday.

As thousands of passengers waited at Gatwick Airport, south of London, police hunted unsuccessfully for the operators of the large drones which reappeared near the airfield every time the airport tried to reopen the runway.

Police said there was no indication of a terrorism motive behind the devices, which first appeared on Wednesday night.

"We will be deploying the armed forces," Defence Minister Gavin Williamson told reporters. "We are there to assist and do everything we can."

Europe's air traffic control agency Eurocontrol said the airport would remain closed until 0600 GMT on Friday.

The airport said flights would remain shut down until further notice on a day when 115,000 people were scheduled to pass through, many en route to seasonal breaks.

Prime Minister Theresa May's spokesman condemned the standoff as "irresponsible and completely unacceptable".

Passenger Ani Kochiashvili had been bound for Georgia but spent six hours overnight sitting on a plane with her children.

"I'm very annoyed because I'm with two kids, a three-month-old and three-year-old," she told Reuters by phone among thousands camped in the terminal.

"They require a lot of space and food and changing and all that, and the airport is crazy busy so it's challenging."

Flights were halted at 2103 GMT on Wednesday after two drones were spotted near the airfield, triggering the biggest disruption at Gatwick since a volcanic ash cloud in 2010.

Police said more than 20 units were hunting the operators near Gatwick airport, 50 km (30 miles) south of London.

Transport minister Chris Grayling said it was clearly a deliberate act. "This is a commercial-sized drone," he said. "Every time Gatwick tries to re-open the runway, the drones reappear."

Grayling temporarily lifted night-flying restrictions at other airports to ease congestion caused by diverted aircraft, Sky News reported.

"COMPLETE MAYHEM"

With a surge in public enthusiasm for drones, there has been an increase in near-collisions by unmanned aircraft and commercial jets in recent years.

The number of near misses between private drones and aircraft in Britain more than tripled between 2015 and 2017, with 92 incidents recorded last year, according to the UK Airprox Board regulator.

Richard Parker, head of air traffic management technology firm Altitude Angel, said this was the first time a major airport had been hit by such a sustained and deliberate incursion into its airspace.

"It's sophisticated, not from a technology side, but it's organized. People have charged lots of batteries, and are deliberately trying to avoid being caught, probably by driving around to different locations," he told Reuters.

"It really is unprecedented."

Gatwick's Chief Operating Officer Chris Woodroofe described one of the drones as a heavy industrial model.

"The police advice is that it would be dangerous to seek to shoot the drone down because of what may happen to the stray bullets," he told BBC radio.

Drone expert Peter Lee of Portsmouth University said he and others had been anticipating disruption.

"One of my concerns about today is that it may well encourage copy-cat incidents because you can achieve a high amount of disruption for a very, very low cost," he said.

It is illegal to fly drones within 1 km (0.6 mile) of a British airport boundary, punishable by five years in prison.

Even after Gatwick re-opens, the backlog and disruption are expected to last for days.

Gatwick said it was working with its airlines, the biggest of which also include British Airways and Norwegian , on recovery plans once the runway re-opens.

Safety was its "foremost priority", it said.

Gatwick, which competes with Europe's busiest airport Heathrow, west of London, had previously said Sunday would be its busiest day of the festive period.

Passengers took to Twitter to share their stories.

One waiting at the airport said: "At Gatwick Airport, drone chaos, surprisingly good natured, but complete mayhem." 

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Movie review: Virus-induced violence in 'Mayhem'

Being in the medical field, movies about viral infections really freak me out. There have been films about bugs which hew close to real-life viruses, like the Matoba virus in "Outbreak" (1995) inspired by Ebola Virus, or the MEV-1 virus in "Contagion" (2011) inspired by the bird flu.

But there had also been highly fictional viruses (we hope) like that in "Night of the Living Dead" (1968) that brings dead people back to life (giving birth to zombie films), or "28 Days Later" (2002) that turns infected people into murderous creatures. Add "Mayhem" to the second kind.

This new virus is called ID-7, also called the Red Eye Virus. When a person gets infected, his id totally takes over his person, and he loses all moral control, causing him to do absolutely anything he wants to do -- however depraved or violent. The virus itself is not deadly, but the person infected is. A court had already decided to acquit a person of murder because he was under the influence of the virus, setting a dangerous legal precedent.

An outbreak of ID-7 has taken over the building of Towne and Smythe Consulting, turning everyone inside into lunatics indulging in unbridled sex and violence. CDC placed it under an 8-hour lockdown until an airborne disinfectant can take effect. Fired lawyer Derek Cho whipped up a plan, together with another disgruntled lawyer Melanie Cross, to take advantage of the killing wave in the building to fight their way up and barge into the penthouse board room in order to assert their rights to the unscrupulous big bosses John Towne and Irene Smythe, by fair means or foul.

I am not fond of gory films. I purposely missed watching "Jigsaw" (or any of the "Saw" films before it), but I end up watching this instead. When this movie eventually turned out to be a relentlessly gore-fest, I admit was not looking directly at the screen anymore whenever that hammer, or rotatory saw blade, or sharp scissors was about to graphically ram into and maim someone's body. As the film goes on, we will be treated to all sorts of gruesome fight scenes and death scenes. It was sickening for me, but I'm sure some people would find this sick in a cool sort of way.

By the over-the-top way all the actors were portraying their roles, you know the intention of director Joe Lynch for the film was comedy. Admittedly, some of the scenes and lines were pretty amusing (well, until the next bloody death came along). I never watched "Walking Dead," so it was my first time to see lead actor Steve Yeun, who played Derek Cho. Samara Weaving (yes, she is Hugo's niece) played Derek's pretty partner in crime Melanie. Steven Brand and Kerry Fox played the despicable bosses Townes and Smythe with a perpetual evil smirk.

As Freud described it, the id has no morals. It only wants instant gratification. An integral part of the id is the aggressive instinct of destruction which only sought to destroy things that get in our way of getting what we want. This film's showcase for the human id could be fun in a dark, morbid sort of way, but the insanely excessive gore in its murder and mutilation scenes were too much for me. Nevertheless, I did like the attempt at redemption at the end, leaving the audience with a positive message after all the mayhem. 4/10

This review was originally published in the author's blog, "Fred Said."

source: news.abs-cbn.com