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

Re:It won't be long

[gweihir]

Not more likely than a bird doing the same. In fact less likely, as the bird has no clue what is going on, but the drone operator wants the vehicle back and hence will try to avoid the collision. This is really a non-issue.

Re:It won't be long

[gweihir]

It did _almost_ happen. That means it did _not_ happen. Really, stay with the facts. Also it likely means it was nowhere close, as in a head-on scenario there is no time to see something this small. Likely it was pretty far from the plane as otherwise it would not have been seen by the pilots at all.

Really, people lose all sanity when they are afraid or faced with unfamiliar risks. Colliding with a flock of birds is a real risk to a landing airplane. A small drone or a single bird is not.