(CNN) — Flights from London’s Heathrow Airport were temporarily suspended on Tuesday evening following a drone sighting.
In a statement, a Heathrow Airport spokesperson said the drone was first sighted in the airport’s vicinity at approximately 5:05 p.m. local time (12:05 p.m. ET) and that the airport was “working closely with the Met Police to prevent any threat to operational safety.”
Departures were stopped as a “precautionary measure” during the investigation, the spokesperson said.
Some flight departures had resumed by 6:20 p.m., according to the aviation tracking website Flight 24.
The disruption at Heathrow comes just weeks after drone sightings brought Gatwick Airport to a standstill for 36 hours, affecting the plans of about 150,000 passengers during the busiest travel period of the year.
Heathrow is currently the world’s seventh-busiest airport in terms of passenger numbers, with 78 million in 2017.
This is a developing story.
This story was first published on CNN.com, “Heathrow Airport halts departures after drone sighting.”
