Drone Sightings Near Other Aircraft Up Dramatically

schwit1 writes The government is getting near-daily reports — and sometimes two or three a day — of drones flying near airplanes and helicopters or close to airports without permission, federal and industry officials tell The Associated Press. It's a sharp increase from just two years ago when such reports were still unusual. Many of the reports are filed with the Federal Aviation Administration by airline pilots. But other pilots, airport officials and local authorities often file reports as well, said the officials, who agreed to discuss the matter only on the condition that they not be named because they weren't authorized to speak publicly. Michael Toscano, president of a drone industry trade group, said FAA officials also have verified the increase to him. While many of the reports are unconfirmed, raising the possibility that pilots may have mistaken a bird or another plane in the distance for a drone, the officials said other reports appear to be credible.

Comments

These idiots are going to ruin it for everyone

[ZorinLynx]

Drones are so much fun and you can get so many cool photos and video from them.

Yet these morons flying drones near airports are going to ruin it for everyone. Expect to see them heavily regulated or banned soon.

This is why we can't have nice things. :(

Re:These idiots are going to ruin it for everyone

[tlhIngan]

In the USA, I believe that we classify a drone as a flying vehicle which can be remotely piloted via either instrument or visual feedback. Anything else is just R/C stuff. I believe that is what these craft are. Although I did see one listed at frys.com going for $250 USD that had FPV video included in the controller. But I digress, my point is that anyone operating these type of craft "drones" should be operating like they would any other flying vehicle and be aware of their surroundings. It's a damn quad-copter with FPV feedback!, why the hell wouldn't you be constantly looking around? If more parents had taught their ignorant children, people would know better, but Nooooo. Some idiot has to shit in the gene pool.

The problem is that R/C and your modern drone are completely different beasts.

In the R/C world, you're constantly controlling your vehicle - because if you don't, you'll either bust airspace or it'll crash. You have to FLY an RC vehicle.

Modern drones though, basically do "all the hard stuff" for you. You basically tell it to take off, and boom, it's in a stable hover 1m above the ground in front of you, and it'll do that with zero input from you until the batteries or fuel runs out. The autopilot on board keeps it in a stable position.

The user of a drone basically just commands the drone to go to places, while the onboard computer figures out how to do that and maintain stable flight. There isn't much more to ones that can go from GPS waypoint to waypoint.

The fact that the user doesn't really need to "fly" the vehicle leads to dumb users (they are REALLY that simple to fly) to do stupid things. FPV gets addicting, so they're concentrating on that rather than watching what their drone is doing, and oh, you just crashed into something you didn't see because your eyes were on the camera feed and not on the craft. (In the R/C world, you can never take your eyes off the aircraft or you can lose it).

Basically the ability of the drones to fly themselves results in the pilots going from having to learn how to fly (and learning the rules and regulations as a side effect) to basically ordering it off of Amazon, opening the box, clicking "fly", and boom they're in the landing path of aircraft.

Reminds me of that Simpsons episode where Sidewhow Bob jumps in a fighter plane, sees how the Air Force has dumbed it down to "Fly" and "Stop" buttons. The modern drone is just like that.

Re:These idiots are going to ruin it for everyone

[bruce_the_loon]

Not an engine incident, but a bird strike that forced a medical chopper to land yesterday. http://www.ems1.com/animal-attacks/articles/2021439-Bird-strike-downs-Texas-medical-helicopter/

Also, search for images for bird strike helicopter and see what shows up. Some serious damage.

Re:These idiots are going to ruin it for everyone

[JWSmythe]

At the speeds commercial aircraft are moving, yes, I could see a pilot mistaking a bird soaring for a RC airplane.

I was in a Cessna, in the pattern to land, I had just a couple seconds to avoid a buzzard. That was, nothing visible to "what's that?" to "oh shit!". I banked hard hard to miss it. The others in the plane were a bit freaked, and happy at the same time. They didn't realize what was happening, but the one who saw the bird barely miss the windshield was very happy I did it. It would have hit his side. That roughly a 5 pound bird with a 65 inch wingspan. That'd be a pretty big drone.

Here is a video of another pilot with a similar incident, except he didn't even have time to evade. He was going a bit faster than I was.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--XhLJMzRB4

Commercial aircraft are moving much faster, and the pilots are busy doing pesky things like preparing to land. Seeing a bird or drone is nothing more than a glance and a "I saw something".

You can find lots of bird strike videos on YouTube.

With the number of birds (animal kind) in the air versus the number of RC aircraft and drones, statistically I'd say most sightings were birds.

Re:These idiots are going to ruin it for everyone

[xdor]

Yet these morons flying drones near airports are going to ruin it for everyone.

No, the FAA already ruined it for everyone by redefining the rules against congressional legislation. They've also ruined it for business by not having any sort of a plan to allow them to be used commercially.

IMO people like you who think good behavior will let you have nice things when your government is suppose to work for you are the problem.

Re:These idiots are going to ruin it for everyone

[jbwolfe]

At the speeds commercial aircraft are moving, yes, I could see a pilot mistaking a bird soaring for a RC airplane.

It has less to do with relative speed than relative speed vectors. The most difficult target to see, even when advised of its presence, is coming from a constant bearing decreasing range as there is little change in position with respect to field of vision. I have flown past, on three separate occasions, mylar balloons while at cruise flight levels (FL300-FL390) at 400-450 KTAS. The size and shape are arguably similar to drones, so distinguishing a drone from a bird while at drone operating altitudes should be equally trivial, assuming the event wasn't just a flash in the visual periphery.

Commercial aircraft are moving much faster, and the pilots are busy doing pesky things like preparing to land. Seeing a bird or drone is nothing more than a glance and a "I saw something".

My VMC scan at cruise is much less rigorous than while in a terminal environment. The flying pilot should be scanning outside (VMC), and leaving box work to the non-flying pilot. "See and avoid..."

All that said, I have not ever encountered a "drone" in my 15000 hours of flying, respecting the fact that I don't find myself in the environment (which most likely is not large commercial airports) in which drones operate. OTOH I usually have about 1 birdstrike per year, most of which I never see- only hear the impact.

That's weird

[Anonymous Coward]

I was about to say that I've noticed a lot more planes around my drones lately.

In Canada...

[Anonymous Coward]

In Canada, drones are more widely used than in the US, mostly because you can actually legally use a drone for commercial purposes. There are laws about drones: no flying at night, no flying within 5 miles of an airport, no flying above 1200 feet. Spying on people is also illegal. You can take pictures of people on the beach, not through bedroom windows of a 20 story building. Laws are fairly heavily enforced. The police have drones too, and theirs will go after yours. At the most fun: you lose your drone (you can keep the remote, but the drone is gone). At the least fun: the drone is gone, and the remote, and the fingerprints on it lead back to you, and now you stare at the world from the window of the crowbar hotel.

the Government

[swell]

"The government is getting near-daily reports..."

I want Slashdot readers to know I love them for so many insights. But let's not be arrogant about US citizenship. Many readers are not so blessed, and when we say "the government" they may be confused about which we are referring to.

Please, then, say "the US government" if that is what you are speaking of. Notice that most of those outsiders specify which government they are speaking of. And for all you little foreigners, I hope you benefit from this message.

Re:Dangerous? Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Hudson "landing" was caused by a flock of geese (and only possible with an experienced pilot with balls of steel and a shitload of luck). What jet engines are tested for is that they won't explode and damage and take the plane down with them right away. They are not guaranteed to keep working and they sure as hell don't provide normal thrust afterwards. Bird strikes are critical events. A single bird can bring down a plane if it strikes close to ground (during take off or landing).

Re:Dangerous? Really?

[mjwx]

OK, I'm talking more about commercial airliners here rather than piston engined aircraft, but don't they test those engines by firing frozen chickens onto them? If a lightweight plastic drone presents such a risk to an Airbus, then I might holiday closer to home on the future. Do flocks of drones really sit around on the grass at airports waiting to throw themselves into the path of approaching aircraft? Of course I'm not seriously suggesting that they present zero risk, until some loon packs them with explosives before deliberately placing them in a flight path.

Aircraft engine casinga are designed to contain a fan blade breaking lose. They're designed to explode outwards (as demonstrated by the Trent 900's) and aircraft are designed to fly even when you've got one engine out of commission... however.

1. Do you really want to test how well they're built on a regular basis when they're in operation.
2. Do you really want to pay more for air travel because they're replacing engines due to "drone strikes".

So sure as shit an Airbus (or Boeing) will survive a drone being sucked into engine #2, but that flight will be turning right around, disgorging it's passengers and heading to the maintenance shed for a new engine. Meanwhile you'll be placed onto later scheduled flights and you'd better hope it's not a once a day flight.

I live in Perth, Western Australia, there is nowhere close to here worth holidaying in (its shit and its expensive), so I'd rather not have my flight play chicken with some moron's drone.

Simple solution

[smooth wombat]

Pay Bubba and his buddies to do patrols around the airport. Any drone which flies within a certain area is fair game for target practice.

Re:What is a drone?

[TheCastro1689]

There are no defnitions of it, a drone should be a completely unmanned autonomous aircraft, but those don't exist. So for now it's anything that flys around without a person inside. Kites are just drones with strings nowadays.

Re:No, you're wrong

[ScentCone]

Point was that cheap (enough) ones absolutely have the ability to maintain position (including altitude) via GPS. When you want to start hanging a decent camera, video TX, the downlink receiver/display, and the beefier batteries/props that become part of hoisting the extras in the air and keeping them up there for over 10 minutes, you're getting closer to a $1000 machine. A lot of it depends on how willing you are to source individually cheaper components and do the build yourself, vs buying something (like a DJI products) that just works out of the box, but at more of a premium. Hang out at a forum like RCGroups.com, and you'll see lots of helpful people who cover that whole spectrum every day.