[1][2][3] Runway access is now closed to everyday road traffic but is still available for exceptional, specific, or emergency use as well as pedestrians, cyclists and mobility scooters although an alternative subway is provided.

On 6 March, a Special Air Service (SAS) group shot dead three members of a Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) team, made up of Danny McCann, Seán Savage and Mairéad Farrell while they were making their way to Spain on foot.

The three were suspected of planning to kill members of a British military band with a car bomb outside the Governor of Gibraltar's official residence, The Convent.

At the subsequent inquest into the deaths, members of the SAS team stated that they believed that the three were armed and that they were capable of remotely detonating the suspected bomb.

The legality of the deaths was challenged in the European Court of Human Rights (see McCann and Others v United Kingdom), but it was eventually ruled that the killings were lawful.