I do not have a lot of data on this problem, but I too have had this exact problem on Reserve exactly when an airdrop showed up. It has been awhile since I have played, so I haven't attempted to reproduce it yet. As silly as the airdrop being involved sounds, it is the only thing I could think of so I removed anything that altered airdrop chances or the loot that could be in it. Unfortunately I don't have much testing to say if that helped yet or not.
agreed, it does seem very stupid but the same issue for 2 different people exactly when an airdrop shows up is too much of a coincidence to be unrelated, even though i know nothing about programming.