‘Tis the season to keep calm and carry on
One of Britain’s most famous exports is T-shirts that proudly say ‘Keep calm and carry on’. The saying was first coined during WWII but what the British do not tell you is that the slogan was never used during the war. If events at Gatwick are any guide, the reason for that is that the message is a lie. What we saw in Gatwick was the exact opposite of that slogan. It was huge panic and a total freeze in operations. Keeping calm and carrying on would have been much smarter.
The purpose of the protest was to disrupt operations – apparently for environmental reasons – and it has to be said that it was a total, total success. The green protesters must be delighted with the results. Expect copy-cat operations around Europe, just as soon as the environmentalists get back from their holidays.
But why did the airport freeze? For safety reasons, they say. Think about that. The protest was not aimed at hitting aircraft with drones. If it was, the drones were at the wrong airport. And they stayed at the wrong airport for more than 24 hours. There were no planes to hit. No, the aim of protest was to cause disruption. Tick. It caused huge disruption.
So why did the airport not respond with a clear-headed response instead? Flying aircraft would have put the protesters into a much more difficult position. It is already clear they did not want to be mass murderers. They flew the drones to keep the aircraft on the ground, not to make them plunge into the ground. If they were trying to murder travellers they would have moved on immediately. Let me repeat – they did not do that.
Secondly, if the protesters were mass murders they would not have used drones. There are significantly more effective ways to bring aircraft down than with the use of a tiny drone against a huge aircraft. It is also totally untested that it would even work. There are huge questions about the likelihood of something like a drone – almost certain to be sucked into an engine – having any impact at all.
There have been some tests done, but none that actually show anything worthwhile. If you fire a drone out of a cannon and it hits the aircraft window it will break it, one test shows. How to fire a drone out of a cannon that close to an aircraft remains an unanswered question. Indeed, given the unquestioning way that study was seized upon to prove a point – by the pilots’ union – it remains an unasked question too. The same tests also showed that hitting a high speed drone whilst in cruise at 33,000 feet is also likely to be dangerous. What that has to do with this situation is also in the ‘further work to be done’ category. But it will never be done. That is yet another question that will be both unasked and unanswered.
The study above was sponsored by the pilots. Pilots have led the scare campaign about drones from the start. They fear, rightly, for their jobs. So they have told the world that drones are a menace. Shame on us for falling for such self-motivated nonsense.