At around 8.20pm on Friday 30 October 2026, States of Jersey Police took the first call: drones in the restricted airspace over Jersey Airport. The reports kept coming for more than two hours. By the time they stopped, three airliners bound for the island had turned around.

Twenty-four hours later it happened again. Four more flights could not land, one of them ended up in Paris, and Jersey’s Chief Minister was calling it what he believed it was: deliberate and unlawful.

Friday: three flights turned away

The aircraft affected on Friday evening were a British Airways service from London Heathrow, a Loganair flight from Southampton and an easyJet flight from London Gatwick. All three were initially diverted. The Gatwick flight eventually landed at around 11.45pm, with the airport staying open late to take it, while the Heathrow and Southampton services were cancelled, the BBC reported.

Police said activity was reported until approximately 10.30pm. Inspector Rob McCallum told the BBC it was believed “two or three” drones had been in the restricted airspace, and that the incident was not thought to be linked to terrorism.

The response was big for an island of Jersey’s size. States and Honorary Police, Channel Islands Air Search, government staff and Ports of Jersey searched several areas in the west of the island, including St Peter, La Pulente, L’Etacq and Jubilee Hill. No operator was found.

Saturday: Madeira to Paris

Shortly after 8pm on Saturday 31 October, airport staff reported further drone activity near the airfield, ITV News reported. An inbound charter from Madeira was diverted to Paris Charles de Gaulle. Loganair’s 8.30pm service from Southampton was cancelled, according to AeroTime, and easyJet said one return flight to Gatwick could not operate. ITV reported that passengers on the Gatwick flight, among them the Jersey RFC squad, waited about four hours on the runway before being told it would not depart.

Jersey Airport’s late-night statement did not name the flights. It did not need to. Two evenings, seven inbound flights disrupted, and a lot of passengers stranded on the wrong side of the English Channel.

“Not a prank or a harmless hobby”

In the early hours of Sunday 1 November, Chief Minister Senator Lyndon Farnham issued a statement calling the drone flights over the two evenings deliberate and unlawful. He said the government was working with UK authorities and specialist agencies on extra operational support, better detection and counter-drone technology.

The law is already tough. Flying a drone inside Jersey Airport’s restricted zone without permission from air traffic control is illegal, and under the Air Navigation (Jersey) Law 2014 anyone found to have endangered an aircraft can be fined or jailed for up to five years, the BBC noted.

Police widened their appeal to the whole island after Saturday, asking for dashcam, doorbell and phone footage and urging anyone who sees a drone being flown near the airport to call 999. Government officials met on Sunday to prepare measures for the evening, and medical passengers caught up in the disruption were being given priority on flights.

Was there a third night?

Not on the evidence so far. On Sunday the government described its steps as precautions against further disruption, and reports published on the morning of Monday 2 November, including the BBC’s, referred only to the Friday and Saturday incidents. Nobody had been identified or arrested, and no drone had been recovered.

That last point matters. The specialist site Dronewatch noted that it remained unclear exactly what was seen near the airport. Europe has been here before: at Gatwick in December 2018, about 1,000 flights and 140,000 passengers were affected over three days, and no culprit or physical evidence of a drone was ever found.

BBC News report from December 2018, when drone sightings shut London Gatwick for three days, the benchmark for every airport drone incident since.

Part of a wider pattern

Jersey is the latest in a string of European airports hit by drone sightings this autumn. Luxembourg Airport suspended operations on the night of 18 September, with Prime Minister Luc Frieden saying the authorities had no information on where the drones came from. Five days later, Berlin Brandenburg closed its airspace for about 45 minutes after a sighting over the northern runway.

The Jersey Airport drone incidents add a small island to that list, one where the airport is the main lifeline. As Senator Farnham put it, the island will not tolerate behaviour that jeopardises its safe operation. The difficulty, from Gatwick to Findel to St Peter, is still finding the person holding the controller.

Sources: Government of Jersey, BBC News, ITV News, Jersey Evening Post, Bailiwick Express, AeroTime, Island FM, Gulf News, Dronewatch, Anadolu Agency, Wikipedia (Gatwick Airport drone incident; Jersey Airport)