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."

Comments

This is _not_ an plane-vs-plane collision risk...

[gweihir]

Unless said drone carries some hardened steel components, this is more like a collision with a bird. Even airplane engines (the most vulnerable part) are designed to withstand that. A direct collision will probably result in some light paint scratches on the airplane. Unlike the case of an airplane collision, the destruction of the drone is not an issue here.

What is going on here is that some bureaucrats inflate the risk perception of something that is basically a non-issue to look really, really dangerous. This is likely done for purely political reasons, to inflate their perceived importance.

Re:Forget paranoia, more likely about the $$ it co

[ihtoit]

I would rather trust the CAA's own reporting and videos on Youtube ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?... ) showing bird strikes and what one (that's 1!) goose can do to a £230,000 engine. Three strikes a year which result in emergency landings, and that's just in UK airspace. Sometimes strikes aren't through engines, but through cockpit windows.

That is a risk.

Drones? That's just fucking lunacy. I'd go so far as to call it malicious intent.