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Heathrow Plane In Near Miss With Drone
An anonymous reader writes with news about a near miss between a drone and a plane near Heathrow. "An unidentified drone came close to hitting a plane as it landed at Heathrow, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has confirmed. An Airbus A320 pilot reported seeing a helicopter-style drone as the jet was 700 feet off the ground on its approach to the runway at 1416 GMT on 22 July. The CAA has not identified the airline or how close the drone came to the plane, which can carry 180 people. It gave the incident an 'A' rating, meaning a 'serious risk of collision'. This is the highest incident rating the CAA can give. Investigators were unable to identify the drone, which did not appear on air traffic control radar and disappeared after the encounter."
until these morons flying drones over and around airfields cause death, probably some kind of small light training vehicle with an inexperience "pilot".
7.5 gram bullet "threatens" 100 kilogram man. You are a complete fucking moron.
And stop with the semantics. R/C A/C are "drones" according to definition; the difference now is they're switching from being almost exclusively operated by responsible hobbyists who take years to train and gain expertise, to being something any fucktard with an iPhone can fly in flight paths.
N417SW SKYWEST AIRLINES FLIGHT SKW2608 BOMBARDIER CL600 AIRCRAFT ON FINAL, STRUCK BIRDS, LANDED WITHOUT INCIDENT, DAMAGE TO AIRCRAFT IS MINOR, SACRAMENTO, CA
http://www.asias.faa.gov/pls/a...
UAVs (sometimes called "drones") shouldn't be operating around airports but the likelihood of one downing a transport category aircraft is just about zero.
That would not fit the agenda of the people blowing this up beyond all proportions. What happened was basically a non-event. What gets reported is a near mass-casualty. There is a political agenda behind this, as there sure is no valid risk-management angle.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Yes, it IS a threat. And a responsible person wouldn't be flying these things where they can put other people's lives at risk.
Yet airports DO take measures to discourage birds from being in their vicinity. Now, most birds generally don't fear fines and prison sentences, so the measures usually take the form of: (i) changing the environment, to make it less appealing -- removing surrounding trees, food sources, etc; (ii) trained birds of prey; (iii) sound-generating devices.
RC aircraft have historically been used by a small number of (responsible) hobbyists. Drones are becoming more widespread, and their owners are starting to include idiots.
It's a shame that some idiots are behaving this way. I say release the falcons on them!
Let's trust Wikipedia on bird strikes and assume that small objects (under about 10kg) rarely cause a catastrophic collision, mostly it looks like bird strikes and similar are survivable for planes, they just cost lots of money. Looks like most aircraft aren't going to fall out of the sky even faced with a drone operator who successfully crashes into a plane. However the photos show it can make a pretty mess of expensive jet engines.
So I suspect that commercial interest might also be at play, it would be in the airlines' interest to claim a terrorism threat to stop idiots going to the supermarket in the morning then flying a drone near commercial airspace in the afternoon. Going to cost a lot to replace one of those jet engines from the look of the wikipedia photos showing what happens when a bird hits them.
Seems like if you want to commit an act of terror then a 5kg lump of plastic isn't likely to knock an airliner out of the sky, but it will probably cost the airlines a lot of money so I can imagine they'd quite like some regulations in place to stop idiots flying them near their planes.
I'm fed up with hearing the old trope that engines are tested by firing geese into them. Whilst this is true, the test is to ensure that the engine does not completely disintegrate peppering the cabin with shrapnel. The engine is most certainly not unscathed and if not written off completely would require extensive and costly refurbishment.
A drone may not be as heavy as a goose but it would very likely cause damage to the turbine blades resulting in reduced power and vibration and necessitating expensive repairs. Reduced power would also pose a danger.
Consequently, it goes without saying that airports do everything possible to prevent bird strikes and will presumably do the same for drones.
It's unfortunate that idiots like this (and the idiots that shine lasers into cockpits) will spoil it for us all. Inevitably, good toys will eventually be banned.
A pilot earning a small fortune, whose entire professional life is based on trust in him to save lives, whose entire career can be blighted by a single "what I saw wasn't there" incident, who's sitting next to co-pilots, lying in order to get an aircraft that he probably plays with at home himself banned?
Yeah. Right. It's all a conspiracy. Or some dickhead tested out his kids Christmas present and didn't know the laws surrounding drones because "it's just a toy", or wanted to get a cool shot of a plane taking off.
Heathrow is restricted airspace. NOTHING should be in that area, it's the world's busiest airport. You report ANYTHING out of the ordinary as a matter of course, as a pilot. And radar won't see a drone any more than it will see a house, or a car, or a cloud, or a big bird on it's own, or a lost birthday balloon. It's looking for aircraft. And all aircraft carry transponders blurting out their name and position by law anyway, which is the basis for air traffic control. Radar isn't there to find these kinds of things.
Occam's Razor. Either it's a conspiracy by the airports, the pilots, the governments and the CAA to ban drones that they themselves are using. Or it's some idiot with a Christmas toy. And they are already having enough problems with laser pointers, etc. by such idiots. I'm going with the later.