Re: I hope you drone pilots have decent insurance
I'm guessing that you're an American, we don't have "reckless endangerment" in England and Wales. I know you tend to assume that your laws apply worldwide but that isn't the case.
Well, you know what an assumption makes of you - as you are wrong (not a US citizen, and definitely never going to be one). The challenge I have is that I travel, so I have to deal with numerous legal frameworks, each with their own little quirks ranging from "oh, that's not illegal here" (downloading movies in Switzerland) to "we'll publicly whip the skin off your back" (dropping a chewing gum in Singapore) but on Friday's I'm not going to work too hard at satisfying people who focus on detail to avoid the substance of a discussion.
The point I was making was that there are always framework laws to catch idiots endangering others by the blatant stupidity of their actions, and people operating drones near an airfield certainly fall in that category ("idiots", just in case you lost track). If you want to argue that some *may* indeed know what they're doing, well, they would not be near the airfield other than with solid permission and usually with a link to ground control to ensure they can also be kept out of the way in case of emergencies (an airport readying itself for an emergency CERTAINLY is not the place to f*ck around with dangerous toys hoping to sell images for big bucks).
I would personally have no problem with anyone declaring the unauthorised/uncleared use of drones near air traffic as equivalent to an act of terrorism. If you consider that harsh I'd keep in mind that you are playing with the lives of hundreds of people in one go, those in the planes up there as well as those left behind when it all goes wrong. Real life doesn't have an undo button.
too often the airlines assume right of way because they're big. The responsibility for avoiding collision is shared equally on both parties. In a crash because the pilots were heads-in it'd be the pilots at fault. It's the same mentality that causes bus and HGV drivers to mow down cyclists and motorcyclists.
So, your argument is that a pilot who is on a controlled, carefully planned, mandated and predictable trajectory with quite a few tonnes of machinery and passengers should seek to evade your toy because he'd be otherwise be bullying you? They would be at fault when one of these toys gets sucking into an engine because they suddenly have a "shared responsibility" avoiding a collision with something that should not even *be* there? Really?
Wow. Did you by any chance inhale some of that printer toner that Alistiar Dabbs was talking about?
Biting the hand that feeds IT
