Could an electric fence have stopped Gatwick drone chaos?

Athanasios Gioumpasis | Getty Images

Passengers stranded at Gatwick wait for updates on their travel options on December 20, 2018.

Technology that stops drones delivering contraband to prisons could be used to prevent chaotic flight disruptions like those seen at London’s Gatwick Airport this week, an industry expert told CNBC.

A drone flying in the airspace around Gatwick caused the airport to shut down on Wednesday and Thursday, affecting at least 120,000 passengers. Flights resumed on Friday morning, but more journeys are expected to be delayed, canceled, or diverted.

Brian Burridge, chief executive of the U.K.’s Royal Aeronautical Society, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” Friday there was potentially a commercial solution to the issue.

“Given the prevalence of drones and very large drones in military operations, defense companies have been working on this for some time and mitigating measures (do exist),” he said. “For these commercial drones, technologies are being developed mainly (to confront) the way drones are used to deliver contraband to prisons.”

Burridge said companies Drone Defence and Eclipse Digital Solutions had provided what was “essentially an electronic fence” around a prison on the island of Guernsey, a British Crown dependency near the French coast.