Navy Base Readied to Act Against Drone Over San Diego
Airport traffic was halted on September 4. A recording suggested the drone may have been shot down, but no confirmation was provided.
On Friday afternoon, September 4, departures and arrivals at San Diego International Airport came to a halt as planes waited on the runway. Around 2 p.m. local time, the airport announced that a drone and a weather balloon had been spotted nearby, and the Federal Aviation Administration suspended traffic. Operations returned to normal around 4:30 p.m.
The disruption hit at the start of Labor Day weekend in the United States. According to NBC San Diego, citing FlightAware data, about 420 flights had been delayed by 6 p.m. The FAA said the average delay was about 122 minutes. Those figures cover the disruption as a whole, not necessarily every flight delayed because of it.
What the Pilots Reported
Documents released by the FAA in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from The Black Vault include two incident reports and recordings from the control tower. According to the documents, pilots of planes waiting on the runway reported a drone hovering just above the end of the runway. At least seven planes continued to report it