Jet Strikes Drone Near Heathrow Airport (marketwatch.com)

smooth wombat writes: "A British Airways flight Sunday appears to have collided with a drone on a flight bound for London's busy Heathrow Airport in what may be the first such incident involving a major airline," according to MarketWatch. "The flight from Geneva, Switzerland to Heathrow, Europe's busiest hub, is believed to have struck a drone, the London Metropolitan Police said in a statement. The plane landed safely following the incident, which occurred around 12:50 p.m. local time. 'It was only a matter of time before we had a drone strike given the huge numbers being flown around by amateurs who don't understand the risks and the rules,' said BALPA flight safety specialist Steve Landells... 'Much more education of drone users and enforcement of the rules is needed to ensure our skies remain safe from this threat'."

Comments

Re: Why no engine grill?

[silentcoder]

Wow you would think the PHD level engineers that have been designing jet engines for decades would have thought of that ... and maybe if it was so easy, they would have done it by now ?

There's only about a billion reasons it wouldn't work, and one of the first that springs to mind is that jet engines are sucking in air - at a huge speed (in many cases several times the speed of sound)... you stick a grill in there, you are reducing the possible airflow. That grill will have to be made of something incredibly (probably impossible) strong just to prevent it getting sucked in itself (seriously - you have no idea the force a jet engine generates -it's not like an air-conditioner - those things put out hundreds of KILONewtons in thrust). And if you actually build your super-grill, you will hugely weaken the engine because it will not be able to get air in as fast. Even most basic grill that actually does something useful will be at least a 30% reduction in engine power (50% is more likely for anything strong enough to do the job)... so now you'll need twice as many engines. Which means twice the fuel, and of course you've greatly increased the weight of the aircraft so you have to increase the wing-size massively to compensate... but that means you have to go *faster* to be able to generate enough lift which means you need more engines...

They don't call it the tyranny of the rocket equation for nothing.