Yet another...
Sighting of an unladen swallow.
London Heathrow Airport temporarily halted departing flights this evening after a drone was apparently spotted hovering in the area. Staff hit up the capital's Met Police to help probe the alleged sighting, according to a short statement issued on Twitter at 0947 PST (1747 UTC)... We are responding to a drone sighting at …
Last time I checked the certification requirements for airliners tend to involve losing an engine at the most critical point: still on the ground but too little runway left to stop. Loss of an engine at altitude is an inconvenience.
"Things might get a bit iffy" is arguably the exactly right wording, considering that no, airliners are _required_ to be able to take off perfectly fine even after losing an engine, right at take-off, as the first reply at this link not only asserts but convincingly documents. Not that anyone would WANT that of course, but let's not panic worse than it's actually warranted.
While the aircraft may be okay if it loses an engine, what will the impact being on the general public and the press?
Headlines of "Heathrow flight taken out by drone, imagine what terrorists with two drones could do!!!!" may be difficult to manage.
We've already shown how willing passengers are to be molested by security staff and pillaged by airport shops in the hope of being "a little safer" from terrorists - drones around airports is more about managing PR than aircraft engineering at this point in time.
More to the point if, at best, a load of debris from the now unserviceable engine spews over the M25 or at worst the aircraft is unable to gain enough height as it all goes pear-shaped then what? Time and time again the theory of what is supposed to happen versus what actually happens in these situations is usually worse.
You will end up with an aircraft crashing in a densely populated area unless the pilots had enough control to ditch in one of the reservoirs.
Whether on the ground of the air it is not a risk that should be taken on a whim.
Thanks for invoking that great cultural memory.
Carry On Flying. Sid James pulls stunts to distract attention from [subplot involving Windsor's assets and evil genius Williams]. Clouseau-eqsue cop Bresslaw devotes lots of effort to Innocent Hawtrey seen in possession of kiddies model aircraft that doesn't fly. Any screenwriters want to flesh something out?
Well, it distracts the plebs from Brexit. Noticable it happened just as MPs were fighting the government in Parliament, demanding that the government remove 'no deal' as an option.
Hold on, that's the decision that legal opinion has declared is the perview of MPs - the legal case that Remainers fought and fought for. Ok, MPs, get on with it!
just as MPs were fighting the government in Parliament, demanding that the government remove 'no deal' as an option.
No Deal is a frothing mental option - the clinically braindead option vs. May's serious head injury option.
I'm starting to think maybe Heathrow decided on not plumping for the luxury executive Drone protection plan option, and Mr Luigi Vercotti and Mr Dino Vercotti will be seen in the Heathrow Administrative offices in the next day or so.
MPs were fighting the government in Parliament, demanding that the government remove 'no deal' as an option
Do these MPs understand that 'no deal' isn't an option (i.e. something you choose)? It's just what happens when you refuse everything else, which is what those same MPs seem bent on doing.
Do these MPs understand that 'no deal' isn't an option (i.e. something you choose)? It's just what happens when you refuse everything else,
Probably out of fear that Reese and the Exit means exit group will vote for No Deal with all the same ferver of the radicals yelling admiral ackbar and lighting a fuse in a packed public space.
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"The cops claimed dozens of "credible" witnesses reported seeing one or two quad-copters over the runways"
@chivo
I had the same thought, dozens of credible witness yet none of them had a smartphone/camera with them ....... kinda strange in these days where everyone is "always connected".
I wonder of there are now people that don't know the difference between a drone and other flying things, you know like flappy feathered things called birds?
Reminds me of the amazing amounts of UFO sighting in the 60/70s etc
I'll stick to my theory. Gatwick was a christmas tree; all that follows is inspired by that.
I'm not sure a couple of blurry pixels zig-zagging occasionally across a shakily-held video image as the incidental videographer tries to track it with a 250ms delay between reality and what is on the phone screen would really be very helpful.
And shouting "Enhance" at it doesn't work like on TV/Movies.
@VikiAi
I would much rather see something Zig-Zaggy rather than absolutely nothing at all. Anything helps to prove that there is fact behind the words and not just someones imagination,
Many of the modern higher end Smartphones have some pretty good objectives today, and if you are close enough to recognize that it was in fact a drone then I am sure that the camera would easily film it, even if a little shakily.
I'm not sure a couple of blurry pixels zig-zagging occasionally across a shakily-held video
Do you realize HOW MUCH CCTV is at Heathrow. This is not Gatwick where the runway is in the middle of a field. One of the runways is BEHIND Business T5, Long Term T5, Enterprise and other car rental car parks. All of these have CCTV coverage which as a side effect also covers the runway behind it. The other one is adjacent to various repair/engineering facilities with coverage as well.
So if there will be footage it will be anything like shakily held.
I am calling a mass psychosis bullshit on this one or someone about to miss his flight and doing an "exam bomb". This time. There will always be a next time.
Frankly, I find the unquestioning repetition of the phrase "environmental terrorist" to be the action of a craven shill.
Why? Because you don't like the idea?
Plod have covered themselves with something other than glory in the Gatwick pantomime, but whilst they believed that there was or might be a drone, they'd also need to be considering a motive, and that is one of a very small number of credible options.
Lets face it the tree huggers have "form" in respect of various stupid, risky and obstructive actions - climbing industrial machinery at coal power stations, gluing themselves to various commercial and government buildings, illegal attempts to disrupt fracking, attempting to stop the construction of the second runway at Manchester airport, blocking roads in London.
Lets face it the tree huggers have "form" in respect of various stupid, risky and obstructive actions - climbing industrial machinery at coal power stations, gluing themselves to various commercial and government buildings, illegal attempts to disrupt fracking, attempting to stop the construction of the second runway at Manchester airport, blocking roads in London.
As true as this is, and whilst it was a valid possibility during the Gatwick scare, we can probably discount it now since no group has claimed responsibility. It's unlikely to be activists given the absence of some sort of manifesto.
It's not the cry of a craven shill to suggest it as a credible possibility - environmental activists have done stupider things. But in this particular case, nobody is trying to get coverage of their aims or manifesto, which means it's probably either:
* Kids being tools
* Russian agents gaslighting us
* Figments of people's fervoured and paranoid imaginations now that they've been led into a siege mentality by the press
I'll leave it to the commentards to rank the respective likelihoods based on Occam's Razor.
Lets face it the tree huggers have "form" in respect of various stupid, risky and obstructive actions - climbing industrial machinery at coal power stations, gluing themselves to various commercial and government buildings
Going by that list, it's mostly putting their lives as on the line as what they are trying to protect.
Any drone big enough to have a hairy scruffy type strapped to it would be hard to miss I'd think.
Doesn't really fit the M.O.
Terrorism could reasonably be described as causing damage for political goals.
These eco terrorists are intentionally costing the airlines a great deal of money as well as intentionally costing a great number of travellers their holidays.
I would be perfectly content to see them sent to Guantanamo.
Terrorism could reasonably be described as causing damage for political goals.
Well, that's a dangerously anti-democratic definition. Are you a member of the Cabinet?
By that, any mostly peaceful protest, becomes terrorism if it affects commerce or some opportunistic lout breaks a window due to the over-stimulation....
Any effect on the economy is already considered damage if the government doesn't think they caused it.
Before you know it, wearing a bad suit outside an expensive fashion emporium is terrorism.
Lets stick to terrorism being causing or threatening loss of life. To prevent plod from extending terrorism to include batty stressed housewives shoplifting sprees.
The news here in the States has done a lot of coverage of the plod and the government's stance on drones, airport, and border security in Blighty. Could this all be security theater (or theatre if you prefer) so that Parliament and the plod are "doing something to keep everyone safe"? Or maybe even the company that's selling the systems now for detecting these things?
This whole affair smells like 3 day old fish that's been left out in the sun. I'm waiting for sightings here in the States to "increase security" but somehow, I don't think drones over the southern border will do that but in the race to the bottom that we've been seeing the last few years, It wouldn't surprise me.
The news here in the States has done a lot of coverage of the plod and the government's stance on drones, airport, and border security in Blighty. Could this all be security theater (or theatre if you prefer) so that Parliament and the plod are "doing something to keep everyone safe"?
I'm sure that some of the more asinine comments by government Ministers are just arse-covering to demonstrate that they're "doing something to keep everyone safe". However aviation-related security theatre is more of a US speciality.
After Sussex Police made complete and utter fools of themselves, an opportunity for another police force to do the same!!
On the basis that Sussex police DID make complete and utter fools of themselves, you reckon all police forces should ignore reports of drone activity near airports, then? Maybe they could stop responding to laser harassment of aircraft as well.
At least that would free up resources to keep the hoi polloi away from grandstanding by moron politicians outside Parliament.
True.
But do you want to be the person that said "naah, there is no drone, no need to do anything"? So, yes, I can get their response. And to the "why no cell phone pictures?!" - person: do not assume everybody has a phone that can take a picture of a small object more than a few 10m away.... Most phones cannot, while you could still see and possibly identify the object. Phone cameras are optimised for a very different use.
This kit isn't using FM/AM/VHF for it's flight modes ….. is it?
I know these things use a kind of modified proprietary protocol while in use
Don't the manufacturers have to provide specific details on how to track them?
I'm into model boats, and have one fitted with a telemetry system that reports back to a computer/phone/website which ever I want
I've sniffed the packets from it and the data contains the serial no, last 2000 location points and obviously telemetry data (speed/heading/duration)
OK, so all of that can be spoofed, but the original data is hard coded into my device, even if I make s/w changes to it
Therefore it sends the real & fake info (which I thought drones did as well)
I'm guessing the suspects aren't creating their own network covering the entire airside operation
(or are they)?
Well they must be pretty clever and quite numerous people needed and tonnes of kit
Is it a DJI or better make if there is one (Don't DJI have a real time method of monitoring ALL their products)
I'll bet that they do, so why arn't the manufacturers assisting with the loction tracking data
There must be an easier answer than closing thee airport
Put me in charge of protecting our airports and you'll never see another drone within 5 miles of the perimeter fence
Or did I get this totally wrong and it is actually cheaper to send in a couple of thousand coppers in the dark. haha
Mr_Pitiful
Why do people keep going on about DJ Phantom drones? They are lovely bit's of kit - but essentially 'Apple' - shiny, expensive and cool. Just like you can actually buy phones without paying £1000 plus, you can buy a drone for pocket money. There is no more reason for a drone to connect to the Internet and report back it's location than there is for a toaster to tell Russel Hobbs how many slices of bread it processed this morning.
To get a 'drone' to fly you need a microprocessor with a 3 axis gyro. That's about a tenner down the river for a piece of kit specially designed to control drones. If you don't want to buy bespoke kit you could modify a Wii controller, or splash out on a cheap smart phone. If you want to tell the 'drone' what to do in real time you need a radio link. The 'drone' doesn't care about frequencies or technologies. Again - splash out 20 quid on a radio designed to control a drone, or use one you have lying around (that cheap mobile phone again). You are, after all, about to break the law, so licencing, frequency congestion etc don't really factor in. You need a few lines of code, luckily lots of it is open source, so feel free to download it - but if you don't want to do that find an eight year old to run you up the software in Scratch. If all that sounds too much like effort you could achieve the same effect with a rubber band powered balsa wood glider and a flashing led re purposed from a xmas tree decoration once the sun has gone down.
Heathrow has a fairly hardcore bunch of plane spotters. I would have thought that they would have the photographic skills and equipment to initially wide-angle video (to prove location) and then zoom in (to prove a drone) if they had seen a drone. So I suggest just another false alarm.
[Sherlock icon as he is usually caricatured using enhanced optics, aka a magnifying glass.]
Problem with this is most of the plane spotters don't have cameras, or binoculars or anything of the sort as the planes are so close at Heathrow. And even when there they do have cameras, the spotters mostly stand in one place (end of Myrtle Avenue) and Heathrow is massive. No way they could see a drone at the other end of the airport. There may be one or two spotters in other locations, but again it's a massive airport.
Having said that there might be one or two security cameras at Heathrow that are perfectly placed to get a view of said drone....
If there ever was a drone in the first place....
Besides the place where most plane spotters go is nowhere near the M4 - there is a lot between them and the M4
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Myrtle+Ave,+Feltham/@51.464596,-0.4270016,15z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x487673a8f39f329d:0x6bb0c760c80bc25!8m2!3d51.4630325!4d-0.4264918
Use streetview from the Great South-West Road.
Security cameras would be best placed to provide an image, but nobody is releasing those images.
Drones will become a serious security issue to all major airports worldwide if an effective deterrent system is not soon developed. In addition lasers pointed at pilots is also becoming a serious hazard that must be addressed. It will only take one plane crash to emphasize why these significant safety issues need to be resolved now.
It's not drones, it's phones which are the real thread. Just imagine the following scenario: Find around 5 people and incite them to call the police or airport security to report a drone sighting. Make sure the reports are supporting each other. In this case the airport management has no choice but to temporary shut down flight activity. It is like the old school prank to issue a bomb thread to the school in order to get a day off or to evade an exam or whatever.
@Pseudonymous Howard: It's not drones, it's phones which are the real thread. (snip) It is like the old school prank to issue a bomb thread to the school in order to get a day off or to evade an exam or whatever.
D is not adjacent to T.
So are the "threads" typos or are you suggesting that the whole thing is a stitch up?
Whether false alarms or real sabotage attempts, this will develop into the biggest game of wack-a-mole the world has ever seen.
All it needs is for the baddies to set up a drone on a fixed flight path, then bugger off.
Oh, and forget about registering and tracking devices. The designs are are so simple that anyone with a 3d printing kit and a tame electronics geek can build their own - at least good enough for a single flight.
... that the Secret Government Solution is to surround all our airports with blimps shaped like Chris Grayling, and held in place by cables, as per WW2. They'll be inflated with an endless supply of high-tech Parliament-generated hot air and Grayling's permanent fixed maniacal grimace grin will serve to scare away trespassers, at no extra cost.
Everything is a drone sighting these days, why can't old fashioned alien saucers cause an alert anymore?
Maybe no one believes in flying saucers these days, while they do believe in drones.
When the human brain sees something they can't grok, they invariably jump to the most recent myth on the popular gossip circle.
I don't think sightings of unrecognised flying things in previous centuries prior to the concept that the earth was not the centre of creation was either drones or aliens - possibly witches, demons or angels or other [fill in religious cultural bias of your choosing].
A man in a traffic jam on the M4 saw it (he was on the BBC). The fact that the M4 is slightly more than a kilometre away from the runway, and where he reported it (Harmondsworth) it runs in a bit of a cutting, suggests that it was a) either a really BIG drone over the runway or b) he has really GOOD eyesight. Can't see any other possibilities. The lights he saw were stationary, so couldn't possibly have been on a tower or anything like that - which at least means that it will have been easy to photograph.
1. Police accidentally fly a Police drone into Heathrow airspace
2. Heathrow literally shits itself
3. The police being the police, refuse to take any responsibility
4. Start finger pointing at people around the airport and make some arrests
5. After a few days, make some feeble "So uh, there might not be a drone" excuse...
Want to pass repressive legislation that people would not normally put up with? Just use the old "Problem-Reaction-Solution" playbook.
Problem: Oh no thousands of people had their holidays ruined at Gatwick
Reaction: Do something!
Solution: Draconian anti-drone legislation and the ever-widening definition of "terrorist".
Coming next - new anti-protest legislation following the harassment of Remain MPs by idiots outside Parliament.
The creek along Heathrow's southern boundary fence west of T5 is rather attractive to wading birds(*). I've watched both cranes and storks launch themselves out of it and then turn north across the operating airfield.
These are "somewhat" larger and more solid than 90% of drones.
(*) As is the marshy bit south of the west end of the airfield.