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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'."
Nobody got hurt. If the commercial aircraft had been damaged, they didn't admit it. You would think that with the degree to which they're desperately trying to control all drone flights, they'd want to boast about any possible extent to which the plane was damaged, so I assume it wasn't. No problem. The entire thing is completely blown out of all proportion.
The fact is, even a giant DJI Phantom Pro 3 or 4 is no larger nor any more dangerous than a large bird of pray and those are regularly sucked through jet engines for the entire time such technology has existed. And yet we don't hear about any mitigation efforts. Why? Because there is NO DANGER.
What there probably IS a danger of on the other hand, is that many sociopathic monsters in government and business continue to want to show their ugly faces in public, even as they are proven to behave as the monsters they are in their public policy decisions and they are probably justifiably worried that one of these days, one of the millions of people they are actively hurting with their greedy decision making will get angry enough to fly a drone up their big noses with explosives to express their discontent. THAT's why we're getting all these dumb drone rules here in the USA. Not because they're actually dangerous to any normal people.