Gatwick MP Says Government Response To Drones Is Insufficient
22 December 2018, 11:08 | Updated: 8 January 2019, 12:48
Henry Smith, the MP for Crawley which includes Gatwick Airport, has told LBC that the government should have stepped in earlier to deal with the drone incident.
The Conservative politician criticised the government's response to drone technology after significant disruption at Gatwick Airport this week.
He told Matt Frei that it's fair for the public to be frustrated with the slow response and that the military should have been called in sooner.
More than 100,000 Christmas travellers were affected when hundreds of flights were grounded from Wednesday night to early on Friday.
Flights were temporarily suspended again on Friday evening after another drone was spotted near the airfield.
It isn't the first time a drone incident has disrupted the airport, according to the Crawley MP.
He said: "I raised the resilience of this key piece of national transport infrastructure in parliament, but clearly the response hasn't been sufficient enough.
"To close the country's second busiest airport for the best part of 24 hours is a massive failure of our security."
