Flying robots are great... until they meet flying humans, anyway

What if the occupant is on a high floor, then? Then wouldn't a rooftop delivery be more practical? Especially in a traffic-heavy environment where the van could have a hard time getting to its destination? There's an advantage to the third dimension, after all.

"You can't restrict delivery drones to a certain air corridor, or altitude, when they may need to access ground level at almost any geographical location."

Well, you *can*, but the limit looks a little different. There are already restrictions on aircraft, especially on helicopters and similar, but these rules are often of the form "minimum AGL".(1)(2) Delivery drones would require a restriction of the form "maximum AGL". Really, does a delivery drone *need* to go more than a few hundred feet above the ground? You'd also need restrictions of the type 'here is an air corridor for landing or taking-off aircraft: no drones.' I mean, I get that sometimes we have problems with birds in and around runways(3), but let's not make it worse.

(1) AGL = Above Ground Level.

(2) Example: Single-engine helicopters have a higher minimum AGL over urban areas than twin-engine ones, because they need to be able to auto-rotate if one engine fails.

(3) Not always around airports and similar. It is, for example, known that Ruppel's vulture sometimes gets as high as 11,000 metres/37,000 feet because one was run over by an a aircraft at that altitude. (The aircraft lost an engine. The bird lost, well, um, everything.)

In rural areas drone deliveries could be useful to reduce the number of van miles per package. In built up areas there is usually a number of nearby deliveries that can be covered efficiently by a single van but in farming areas a delivery van may have to travel multiple miles between each delivery.

My own proposal - within one mile of an airfield no drones above 250 grams unless operated by a qualified pilot with the agreement of the local ATC - between 1 mile and 3 miles from an airfield drones restricted to 100 feet above terrain (land, trees or buildings) - elsewhere restricted to 1000 feet above terrain. A drone under the direct control of a qualified pilot can exceed these height limits with the agreement of the local ATC.

The 250 gram derestriction allows drones that are too light to damage an aircraft to be used near an airfield - small camera drones can even be used to inspect parts of an aircraft that are otherwise difficult to see (eg tail fins ). (250 grams is less than the average weight of a London pigeon.)

Re: Drones intruding in controlled airspace must be disabled

Or disgruntled sea bass .. with frikkin' laser beams

Re: Drones intruding in controlled airspace must be disabled

"Drones intruding in controlled airspace must be disabled"

You really want to encourage everyone with a $1500 drone to invest in "external control free" software, don't you?

Disabling or appropriating private property ought to be a crime... certainly the owners will see it that way, and in an increasingly tech enabled world, may well be able to do something to prevent it.

Re: Also, what about emergency aircraft?

Well actually that one seems easy, assuming that all drones in airspace have some form of positive control, e.g an ability to respond to instruction, you instigate a priority system. Air ambulances would have higher priority than pizza delivery drones, so when the air ambulance says - I want to land at spot X, all drones between it and spot x go away or land.

In fact that gets round the parapente problem too - a drone equivalent of Asimovs 3 laws of robotics, with Law 1 being - thou shall not bump into anything that has humans on board, Law 2 - dont bump into another drone. Law 3 - dont bump into buildings/cars etc.

It doesn't take a bird the size of a goose to tear up an airline engine, not to mention some of them have metallic components, and don't forget helicopters are much more delicate, especially those with tail rotors.

Multiple pilots have reported near misses by drones at airports all around the world, some getting with 5-10 feet of the plane.

It's only a matter of time before one hits a plane, and that could be any damage from a small dent to causing the entire plane to go down. A jet engine is designed to contain bird impacts, not large metal and plastic things so it's possible the engine would have an uncontained failure which could sever important lines in the wings etc.

Or the drone could go through a cockpit window and kill/incapacitate the flight crew or a part thereof.

Re: Risk analysis needed

Ground delivery vehicles tend to be on or near roads, but drones could be dropping on your head pretty much anywhere if they have engine failures.