Heathrow Airbus collision 'not a drone incident' The UK's Transport Secretary, Patrick McLoughlin, has told Parliament that what was thought to be the Britain's first recorded incident of a collision between a UAV and an airliner was probably "not a drone incident" after all. A British Airways Airbus A320 flying in from Geneva was approaching Heathrow airport on 17 April …
...but on the report I listened too, they did then go on to mention other reports as well as one from an Airbus pilot who reported a near miss of between 20-100 feet of a "black drone with a red flashing light". Apparently this occurred at...wait for it...20,000 feet!!!
WTF? I wonder if he saw what is commonly referred to as a retail drone, ie a quad/hex/ocatacopter or if he saw a Reaper or similar? Are there *any* drones available to the public capable of reaching 20,000'?
I was wondering about that, as well. "Near-miss" does imply they failed to miss, ergo, they did hit. "I nearly missed my flight" clearly means you actually did catch your flight, but only barely.
This airliner collided with a UFO. As we learned from the BOFH years ago, a UFO is not, by definition, necessarily extraterrestrial in origin. The authorities have admitted they do not know what it was (so its Unidentified), it was aloft in the air (therefore, Flying) and demonstrably is an Object, and therefore, logically, its a UFO.
I'm glad there was less risk, but I'm not buying the "no risk" assessment until such time as someone has done actual tests and had a few drones mulched by jet engines.
The only risk there is that any reports of survivability may encourage the idiots to come out in droves, at which point you'll end up with the exact flock problem that turns a birdstrike into engine soup.
Stop the assumptions, get some facts. It's time for a new episode of "does it blend", but with more expensive blenders.
Modern passenger aircraft will likely survive any single drone strike, but even so each incident will be expensive and if there is an ingestion then it will be $millions.
Got to try and keep the quadcopters out of the hands of morons. Not an easy task considering some of our 40+ hour course trained licensed private pilots who have passed written tests in air law and navigation, passed a flying navigation test and separate skills test - still manage to blunder without knowing it into controlled airspace with tedious regularity.
It would help considerably if the restricted airspace didn't change every time a bureaucrat has heartburn. There are static ones around airports and high value targets, of course, but others change constantly. An example is in Arlington, Texas. For just one day, there is a 31-mile radius exclusion zone (for manned aircraft and drones) centered around Levi Stadium while the Super Bowl is played. The next day, the exclusion zone vanishes. So if you fly out of a regional airport 30 miles from the stadium...you can't fly *anywhere*...nor can you fly home if you're away. And if the government's spies hear "rumblings" and they raise the terror alert level from Sky Blue to Mauve, the exclusion zones suddenly bloat up all over the nation...then shrink down again for equally mysterious reasons a day or two later. Other zones that didn't exist just pop up then disappear again. By the time a pilot actually plots a course, calculates fuel burn, gets a weather report, factors in the winds, and then plows through a huge pile of NOTAMs to ensure the flight is legal, he may as well just drive in his car and be done with it.
The air is quite active as any glider pilot will tell you. Most of us in commercial airliners only notice this as turbulence -- a heavy plane flies quickly through moving air which makes the plane jump around a bit -- but if you're relatively light moving air can grabl quite large objects and carry them to considerable heights. These objects are usually trash -- bits of paper, plastic bags and so on -- but they can be as large as a cardboard box in a strong thermal. Thermals can also grab model planes and carry them off -- sailplane fliers look for them but sometimes they're so strong that its difficult to keep the model under control -- so I wouldn't be surprised if someone reported a model at a considerable height. However, you do need light things, stuff that you could imagine being blown around because its got a relatively large surface area for its weight. The typical drone -- quadcopter -- won't get carried off because its not in the slightest bit aerodynamic (its brick like properties is what makes it a stable camera platform) so its only likely to be flown under user control. Since you can't actually see the thing at any decent height its likely that these reports of drones at altitudes are bogus (...and you can't see that much out the front of a plane traveling that fast anyway...its only 100-200mph, not particularly fast, but way faster than humans can perceive).
but they can be as large as a cardboard box in a strong thermal.
That would have to be one hell of a thermal. You're not going to see any aircraft flying in such conditions...
The typical drone -- quadcopter -- won't get carried off because its not in the slightest bit aerodynamic
If you're in a thermal, the whole air column is moving. So a drone which is able to balance its own weight - i.e. one which can fly - will get lift just as any other aircraft would.
Vic.
"but they can be as large as a cardboard box in a strong thermal.
That would have to be one hell of a thermal."
Depends on the cardboard box:- they come in sizes from smaller than a matchbox to the size of a packing crate - and in materials from very light card to multi-ply heavy duty stuff.
Depends on the cardboard box:- they come in sizes from smaller than a matchbox to the size of a packing crate - and in materials from very light card to multi-ply heavy duty stuff.
Indeed they do.
And how many times have you seen a cardboard box lifted by a thermal? IME, it only happens directly above a bonfire - and even then, it won't attain much height.
Vic.
I work on the top floor of a high-rise building and often see plastic bags flying past. You can watch them climb for ages. I can quite understand how they could easily get to these heights.
Why is it that people are almost always ready to jump to the "populist" conclusion. If there are stories of people behaving badly with drones the immediate conclusion is that an unidentified close call with an aeroplane must be a drone.
A drone that could reach the reported heights would be an expensive piece of kit that the owner would be most interested in keeping safe.
The pilots and the airline industry in general will be very anti-drone and will look for any opportunity to get publicity against them.
Another incident a couple of months back involving a laser being pointed at a plane climbing out London. The pilots noted the laser and then continued their flight for a further hour or more before one of the crew became unwell past Ireland and over the Atlantic. They then turned about and flew all the way back to their starting point. The pilot being unwell was linked in the publicity to the laser incident, this was a tenuous link at best.
Of course flying drones near airports and pointing lasers at aircraft is moronic, but crying wolf is also not helpful.
UFO sightings aren't the big thing they used to be, and maybe that sort of light plastic bag wasn't so common than they were. But it's interesting that UFOs only really got going after WW2 got people interested in spotting enemy aircraft, and before that war it was more often reported as mystery airships.
It's also interesting that here in the UK, there has been a much more nuanced UFO movement than in the USA. Maybe some of the roots of that difference can be laid at the feet of the Luftwaffe. As a nation, we needed to know some pretty specific things about what was flying overhead.
That's dropping out of living memory, whih is suggestive about the drones.
Anon for a reason... I have a drone, the one that is the most popular make, which has mandatory GPS functions. One of those functions is an exclusion area for all airports and restricted airspace.
So unless the morons have managed to recode their drones, I'm not sure how they could even get them into the airspace in the first place! Maybe throw it?
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