LONDON -- A married couple in Britain who were detained in connection with the illegal use of drones that sowed three days of chaos at Gatwick Airport were released Sunday without charge, and police said they had recovered a "damaged" drone near the airport that was being forensically examined.
Gatwick Airport also announced that it was offering a $63,000 reward for information leading to "the arrest and conviction of those responsible for the criminal act that disrupted flights."
The couple had been arrested on suspicion of disrupting civil aviation services and endangering people or operations, police said in a statement. They are both from Crawley, a town just south of the airport, and the husband's Facebook page suggested that he was a drone hobbyist. The couple's pages included several photos of remote-controlled helicopters.
But on Sunday, Detective Chief Superintendent Jason Tingley of the Sussex police said in a statement, "Both people have fully cooperated with our inquiries and I am satisfied that they are no longer suspects in the drone incidents at Gatwick."
The first drone sighting was reported around 9 p.m. Wednesday, forcing officials to shut down the airport's one runway in West Sussex, south of London, and ground or divert more than 1,000 flights over three days; the runway was buzzed more than 40 times within 48 hours.
The chaos affected more than 140,000 passengers in Britain and reverberated around the world, delaying tens of thousands of people traveling for the holidays. Britons and some lawmakers criticized officials' response to the drone incursions, with some wondering why police did not shoot down the device.
Officials said they had shut down the airport for fear that a drone could cause the deadly crash of a passenger plane by flying into its windows or getting sucked into an engine. Police described the drones seen as "industrial" models, and were not treating the episode as terrorism-related.
The drone incursions raised questions about the safety of Britain's airports and the slow process of establishing a national registry for drone operators, which is planned for November.
The couple were arrested Friday night, after the airport had been shut down and reopened several times, and as the frustration of travelers mounted. In a phone interview Sunday night, Tingley said that the couple had been held for "approximately 35 hours" for questioning because police "needed to be really sure what we were dealing with."
He defended the arrests as "lawful," but criticized the public disclosure of "personal details" about the couple and information about the investigation. The couple's age, identities and images were first published by The Telegraph. A member of Parliament, Henry Smith, whose constituency includes Gatwick Airport, identified the couple to The New York Times.
Sussex police have declined to officially name the couple, and the chief said police had offered them "full support" after they were released -- including the presence of two officers outside their home if they needed it.
Tingley said the damaged drone was found Saturday morning near the perimeter fencing of Gatwick, in the small town of Horley, by a member of the public who alerted police. He said an examination by a forensic science team in Britain was being "prioritized and fast-tracked."
Investigators are looking for two things, he said: digital data on the drone and human DNA. He added Sunday, "We expect results within the next 12 hours."
Earlier, he told the BBC that authorities had an "open mind" about whether the device found could be one of the drones that had buzzed Gatwick Airport, Britain's second-busiest. He said authorities were sifting "many reports of drone activities" over the past few days, pouring over CCTV footage and making house-to-house searches.
On Sunday, drone experts speaking on television raised the specter of copycat drone flights at Gatwick and other airports. But since Gatwick shut down briefly Friday after a suspected drone sighting, no new drone incursions have been reported nearby, and a steady stream of flights resumed, with some delays.
Elsewhere in Britain, Birmingham Airport resolved a problem with its air traffic control system that prevented flights from taking off or landing for about two hours.
There was no indication that Sunday's technical problem in Birmingham, about 100 miles northwest of London, was related to the drone sightings at Gatwick Airport, but it compounded the delays for Christmas travelers and forced some arriving flights to divert to other airports in England.
Information for this article was contributed by Yonette Joseph of The New York Times; and by staff members of The Associated Press.
A Section on 12/24/2018