Police “detected” a drone flying over Glastonbury Festival on Saturday night, despite a legal order banning them from the airspace.
Officers were able to locate the man flying it, who was outside the festival site at the time, and say he’s now got a police interview to look forward to.
Glastonbury is one of only a few festivals where a formal ‘Air Navigation Order‘ is in place, temporarily restricting the airspace around the event. Any aircraft, including drones, are prohibited from coming within 2.5 nautical miles of the Glastonbury site if they’re below 3,100ft altitude – unless they’ve got permission from the police beforehand. Deliberately flying into the restricted area is a criminal offence.
It’s not clear if the police spotted the drone and found its operator, a man in his 30s, by conventional methods (ie visually), or if the locations was found by a drone detection system such as Aeroscope. These specialist devices have previously been used by UK police forces to keep track of any drone activity during restricted events and usually reveal the location of the operator as well as the drone itself.
The Glastonbury Police Twitter account said tonight: “Officers detected a drone flying over Glastonbury 2022 last night and identified its operator outside the perimeter fence.
“Airspace is restricted during the festival and drones are prohibited.
“A man in his 30s will be interviewed on a future date.”
Paul McCartney made Glastonbury history on Saturday night when he became the oldest artist to headline the festival’s iconic Pyramid Stage. His full set is now available to watch on BBC iPlayer. On Friday, Billie Eilish broke the record for the youngest ever solo Pyramid headliner and her set is also now available to watch online.
You can also watch dozens of other full sets including Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds and Diana Ross.
On Saturday, we found out Lily Allen is making her way into Glastonbury, thanks to an Instagram story she shared that afternoon.
She later appeared on stage with Olivia Rodrigo, when they dedicated a performance of her song ‘Fuck You’ to the US Supreme Court for overturning the Roe v Wade ruling on women’s rights. See the clip below.
On Thursday night, Bastille played a not-so-secret set to a packed William’s Green tent – with stewards having the close the area hours before as crowds descended and filled it to capacity. The band appeared with Old Dirty Brasstards and played a set of their classics reworked with the brass band.