In January 2019, flights at the Newark Liberty International Airport were temporarily grounded after a drone was seen at the distance of 3,500 feet above a nearby airport. New Jersey’s airport is 11th busiest airport in the United States and by the international passenger traffic it is the 15th busiest in the country which serves more than 43 million passengers per year. It is one of four major airports serving the New York City and nearby areas.

“At approximately 5pm (22:00 GMT), we received two reports from incoming flights into Newark that a drone was sighted at about 3,500 feet (1,066 metres) above Teterboro, New Jersey,” said a spokesman from the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

According to the pilot, the device was as close as about 30 feet from his plane. Luckily the airport’s operations were hardly interrupted by the incident. In the U.S., drone pilots must keep a distance of about 400 feet above the airport and about 5 miles within.