An airliner circling Heathrow narrowly missed colliding with a drone flying at 7,000 feet – while another aircraft approaching the London airport saw a drone hurtle past just 30 feet from its cockpit.
The first near miss took place in mid-May when an Airbus A319 pilot flying to Heathrow saw a one metre-long drone, painted green and purple, “extremely close” to his aircraft.
The drone, which was flying just above the airliner's level, was only 10 metres (30 feet) from the cockpit. Investigators thought the operator was flying on first-person view using the drone's cameras.
Let's see now: Flying a drone over 1000 feet? Check. Flying a drone near an airport? Check. Flying a drone in the approach path for the airport? Check.The UK Airprox Board graded the risk of collision as Category A, the most severe level.In the second incident, which took place a fortnight after the first, an Airbus A320's first officer saw “a white, twin rotor drone pass by the right wingtip” barely 100m away as the aircraft was descending through 7,000ft over New Malden, south London.
Idiot. He's peeing in everyone else's cornflakes. It makes me want to take up drone skeet like that lady in Virginia.
I'm sorry BP but I'm calling shenanigans on this. This not a hobbyist drone. At a 1000 feet maybe, but not 8000 feet.
ReplyDeleteRatus, you may be right.
ReplyDeleteThis one is forwarded to The Department of Why We Can't Have Nice Things.
ReplyDeleteI find myself a bit suspicious of all these myriad reports of drones within tens of feet of airliners. One would expect that if they're so often getting so close, we'd have more than a few actual strike incidents, even just ones that scratch the paint on the manned aircraft.
ReplyDeleteAnd yet there seem to be only one or two times it's actually, verifiably happened.
Of course a small quadcopter is very unlikely to seriously damage a modern airliner, practically all of which are hardened against bird-strikes, so it's only the larger drones which pose a serious threat. These are extremely uncommon, but somehow I anticipate that the regulatory apparatus getting geared up in various countries to stamp down on private drone usage will fail to distinguish to the degree that the practical considerations justify.