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African Airline Reports Drone Collision With Passenger Jet (airlive.net)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the impacts-in-the-air dept.

McGruber writes: Airlive is reporting that a drone collided with a Boeing 737-700 as it was on approach to Tete, Mozambique airport on Thursday. The 737 landed safely, but the right-hand side of the nose dome and fuselage were badly damaged.
The plane was carrying 80 passengers and a crew of 6, according to the Aviation Herald, which has more pictures of the damaged nose dome. "The crew heard a loud bang," they report, adding that "no abnormal indications followed. The crew, suspecting a bird strike, continued the approach for a safe landing." But USA Today notes that "While pilots have reported hundreds of sightings of drones near planes, previous suspected collisions have been debunked."

4 of 78 comments (clear)

  1. Re:This is not a drone like your kids toy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    Look everyone, an expert on something he has never seen, providing an alternate explanation that ignores the crew's statement that they heard something whild in flight. How blessed we are that /. is full of these.

  2. Birdstrikes don't always leave blood or feathers. by queazocotal · · Score: 4, Insightful

    http://avherald.com/h?article=... - also in africa.
    http://avherald.com/img/comair... - this damage was done by a red billed kite impact.
    Broadly similar amount of buckling, though in a different place.
    There are a lot of large birds in Africa, and aircraft frequently hit them.

  3. That does not look like a drone impact, at all by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Are you sure the pilot didn't bump into something while taxiing and covered his ass by claiming "Russian hackers", no wait, "drone".

  4. Ground impact by thesupraman · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Actually, the damage pattern looks almost exactly consistent with a ground impact.
    It is reasonably clear from the images that the impact came from the front right, not straight on, and any
    drone moving fast enough to create that impact vector at approach speed would have punched straight through,
    not made the distributed damage we see - this was quite clearly a low speed impact.

    The pilots 'reporting a loud bang' on approach makes it sound like a good dose of arse-covering, something
    endemic in Africa when costly damage happens.

    You will note there is no evidence given of drone remains, etc. Something that would most certainly have been
    chased down immediately if this was actually a drone strike.
    A bird strike (which would do less damage that a drone of the size they are claiming) looks like this:
    http://www.birdstrike.it/birdstrike/file/images/file/2012.06.05_birdstrike.png

    Very VERY different.