Overview

Gatwick Drone refers to two drones which flew too close to Gatwick Airport, leading to the grounding of all flights at the airport and hours of delay which affected 760 flights and 110,000 passengers. The event was parodied online in numerous tweets.

Background

On December 19th, 2018, the Gatwick Airport grounded all flights after the sighting of two industrial-grade drones flying near the airport.^[1] The grounding caused massive delays at the airport, as well as a storm of up-to-the-minute media coverage from sites such as The Guardian^[2] and BBC.^[3] Tweets giving live updates from the situation include one by @Listy_cl (shown below, left) and @LyndseyClark10 (shown below, right).

Developments

The Sussex police were called in and considered shooting down the drone, but did not citing fear of stray bullets.^[3] The Army was called in to assist as well. As of December 21st, 2018, the perpetrators have not been caught.

Related Memes

While the situation unfolded, Twitter users poked fun at the event. User @GeorgeShankar tweeted a Who Would Win? parody that gained over 700 retweets and 2,700 likes (shown below, left). User @Stephencalver7 made a joke that gained over 270 retweets and 800 likes (shown below, right). These jokes were covered by Daily Dot.^[1]

Search Interest

External References