Drone strike
 

Sky news are reporting that an aircraft inbound to EGLL from LSGG had a drone strike today whilst on approach

I'm surprised its took this long for this inevitability to happen.

According to various news sources the plane was inspected and cleared to fly following the incident.


Edit: looking at FR it could have been A320 BA727 which landed around 12:30 today. I'm not certain of that.

This particular incident appears to have been harmless.

But it does serve to further underline the issue that drones present a very real and immediate danger to commercial aviation.

Like I say, this incident was harmless, but it doesn't take too much imagination to consider what a person with malicious intent and an armed drone could achieve.

link to story on BBC

Drone hit British Airways plane approaching Heathrow Airport - BBC News

How can anybody possibly use this event as proof that drones are bad news?

We all knew that there would eventually be a collision. That is simply a function of number of objects in the air that are not de-conflicted.

We have now had the first event of it's type, and from all reports the aircraft was looked at and then signed off to continue.

This, if anything, suggests that the doom mongers are over-egging things.

Drone hits plane.
Plane not damaged.
Initial indications from an initially miniscule research set suggests that drone strikes do not hurt aircraft. As more collisions happen, I'm quite sure that eventually one will go down an engine. That will be more indicative of whether there is actually a problem.

What we need is not silly hysteria.
We need somebody to test engines against drones like we do against birds.

There are rules. Just no way of enforcing them.
That will change when someone gets hurt.

Tourist, what do you think would happen were a drone to be ingested by an engine?


What happened to Sullenberger's A320?


I concur that this incident doesn't demonstrate the capacity of a drone to bring down an airliner.


It certainly, however, doesn't demonstrate that a drone cannot bring down an airliner.


All it really demonstrates is that planes can collide with drones. Which is obviously a concern.


I see no hysteria here. There may be some in wider media obviously.

@Tourist


So what you are saying is that manufacturers need to spend huge amounts of money on testing for drone strikes to certify every single aircraft and engine in service now and in future?


I'm sure airlines and manufacturers will be jumping for joy at the prospect.

Have any engine manufcturers chucked one in to a running engine yet to see what happens?

I'm struggling to think of an airport anywhere in the world that involves atmospheric re-entry.

Tourist......

"We need someone to test engines against drones like we do against birds"

Will you be happy to stump up the money for this pointless research then?

The drone will have downloaded the impact sequence video to someone's iPad. That someone, (albeing stupid) will share it with others, just like rhino poachers do. It will be the drone operator's El Dorado moment. Within 2 days, I expect it will go viral and Plod will feel a collar in Hounslow.

Seeing as this is an encounter between an aircraft and an 'RPAS', is this officially the first mid-air collision in U.K. controlled airspace..........for a very long time?

If so, it's a sad day indeed.

A turboprop into one of these won't be pretty:

http://www.skycamusa.com/images/5d_drone.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/lpiSw0n.jpg?2

Tourist, have you seen the size of some of these drones? I would bet my bottom dollar that this was one of the smaller commercial drones, but some of the larger professional models would be like hitting a garbage bin.

I for one don't fancy going to work tomorrow and being the unfortunate pilot who hits a drone and becomes the first accident.

Peekay4 - I think it's highley unlikley you'll find a UAV of that kind in the hands of a nutter on the approach to Heathrow...

Nope.

Why should I?

I'm happy to have drones buzzing around, just like I'm happy to have birds flying around.
Those who regulate these things should do some scientific research about the actual rather than perceived risks.
Or, just wait and see.
If they are truly a big risk, then the tombstone imperative will pave the way.
My personal opinion is that these are in the bird strike risk category. All part of the natural risks of life.

The simple fact is that the score is currently 1/0 to the "drones don't damage big aircraft" point of view.

Watershed moment I hope. Gone way too far already.:= Time for a 100 mile(minimum) exclusion zone. Sooner somebody gets :mad: hauled up the better.

From the Guardian's coverage:


'Steve Landells, the flight safety specialist at the British Airline Pilots Association (Balpa), said that data on bird strikes was not useful because “birds don’t have a big lump of lithium battery in them”.


He raised the possibility of engine failure in the event of a drone striking a plane. “You end up with very high-velocity bits of metal going anywhere they like.


That could be through fuel tanks, through hydraulic lines and even into the cabin,” he said.


“Losing the engine is not going to cause an aircraft to crash because they are designed to fly with one engine down. But an uncontained engine failure is going to be different every time. That could be very serious indeed.”


“The first thing we want to do is get a drone or at least the critical parts of a drone flying at a windscreen of an aircraft. The indications so far with computer modelling are that you’ll end up with penetration of a windscreen.

“One possibility is that the battery smashes the windscreen and the inside layer of the windscreen shatters and you end up with a lot of glass in the cockpit, probably moving at quite high speed.


“As a pilot, I don’t want to be sitting there when that’s going on.” '


So research is already happening, albeit in a virtual manner. I would have been surprised to find it wasn't.

Not necessary the answer is already presumed

The engine will be conked and a safe shutdown.

I'll keep my eyes open on the internet for a multi-engine drone ingestion someday in the future where the pilot workload goes up.

Well ,birds ARE natural and cannot be controlled, drones are artificial and ARE controlled - but some nutters cannot control them properly!!!

A drone was recently spotted in flight near Biggin at over 12000 feet. The drone must have had a large battery pack to get to this altitude and it may have also contained a camera and it is these two items that pose a problem due to their density.

Who's going to pay for the engine under test?

What about little aircraft? - it's OK to kill us, is it, as long as the big ones survive?

Old, obsolete, out of hours, not worth refurbish - full power (go-around before someone refers to approach power) - large UAV (WTF is a 'drone'?) and see what happens.

Just so that those not in the trade understand:
The idiots who fly these things in the wrong place are nothing like aviation modellers. They are in the same bracket as those who point lasers at aircraft. Models need to be built by enthusiasts and are relatively difficult to fly. A 'toy' UAV is computer stabilised and controlled so anyone can fly it accurately. I have no objection to recreational use of them such as taking a pic of your house or self from the air but, unfortunately, they are easy for clowns to obtain and fly.

Correct re firing chickens- they are fired into cockpit and radomes and windshields to evaluate certain structural issues. The 767 ' skullcap ' [windshield surround ]was changed to incorporate titanium ' stringers' and substructures and surround as a result of such tests way back in the 80's.

Half frozen chickens and turkeys are one thing- hard metal and batteries are another when it comes to penetration- both for windshields and engines..

Only matter of time till this Drone "bubble" is seriously popped by the regulators/governments and so it should be

Think of a not so distant future where Jihadists use them for sinister acts, drug dealers use them with a weapon attached to kill their competing gangsters, to deliver drugs, to deliver stuff into prisons, to take photos of people in their private space..

The Japanese Police already have a master drone to capture rogues drones

yawn, do actually believe those wishing to deliver a coup de tat on an inbound airliner with a drone swarm attack are actuaļy going to go legit beforehand?

Birdstrike is unfortunate, and sometimes cannot be avoided. Stercus accidit.

However, laser attacks and drones which can be ingested into aircraft engines can be avoided as they are largely the actions of people who know the danger that can result. Therefore they must face the penalty of law. Its an avoidable danger that the passengers of any airline do not wish to be exposed to (and the flight crew for that matter)

Whikle I agree that some perspective is called for the worrying thing is that with all the publicity plus the law about not flying these things near airports some idiot just ignores the rules.
In UK if you buy a TV=same price or less than a medium sized heavier drone that could cause damage you have to supply name and address and of course thats easily linked to drone model and serial number.

Just that process that implies the authorities can chase down offenders would stop things to a degree as would making it clear that if you damaged an airliner or for that matter any aircraft through operating a UAV (yes I agree a drone is a silly name) in the vicinity of an airport is automatically culpable manslaughter with the likelyhood of 15 years inside might also focus the mind. Neither likely in UK where the civil service /poli/legal culture works on the basis of no ones died yet have they.

I don't agree its the same as a bird strike thats always going to be a random act of nature this kind of thing is a deliberate act of recklessness and as there are numerous places where a hard object could cause serious damage to plane it shouldn't be ignored on the basis that-its no worse than a bird strike. After ll there are decades of experience of bird strike damage and I imagine desingers and engineers have a lot of data to work with but not so with UAVs

I think a nutter (a serious one) would very likely use a big heavy UAV such as in the upper photo, in order to do maximum damage.

Even the smaller one held by the kid in the lower photo, if flown by said kid into a jet engine while poppa wasn't looking, would be ... interesting.

I think the authorities' reaction to this incident is likely to be along the lines suggested by Tourist: an aircraft hit a drone, no significant damage, therefore drones aren't a danger to aircraft and we can go back to sleep behind our desks. Nothing will be done until serious damage is caused, probably as others suggest above by an engine ingesting a drone. Then there'll be a panic.

Smaller drones represent an insignificant risk to large aircraft like an A320, 64,500 Kg versus 1 Kg is unlikely to end in favour of the drone. The larger 5Kg and upwards semi professional models that are capable of flights to several thousand feet are clearly a potential hazard.

Perhaps larger drones should be fitted with a mandatory TCAS receiver that causes the drone to immediately land in event of a conflict with an aircraft. A permanent serial number burnt into the computer chips or a system to permanently disable the drone operating system if it is operated in conflict with aircraft could be useful. Something along the lines of disabling stolen mobile phones.

Culprits then either lose the use of their drone permanently, or get brought before the courts to give reasons for flying the drone in potentially dangerous circumstances.

Given how cheap complex electronic devices have become, it shouldn't be hard to devise and implement such systems without compromising drone performance. Modern drones are supposed to have geo fencing built in to prevent flight near airports in any case.

So we are left with legacy drones that can still be flown anywhere. No real solution for these although their numbers should decrease over coming years.

As far as the risk of these things being used as some sort of very slow guided missle, radio controlled planes with far greater performance and payload capacity have been flying for years without similar concerns being raised. Why?

UAV / Drone Solution to commercial a/c:
 

Sorry to be so boring: Roke Manor please take note..... and pay me royalty when you've created it.......

TCAS is a simple interrogation of data.... We have them in all commercial aircraft.

Someone needs to create a TCAS frequency "lookout" for electro data in close proximity and then use the a/c power to create a "boundary layer" safe bubble around the approaching a/c from any direction.

If I can use the a/c power to create a virtual 100 mtr safety bubble around me then I really don't give a to$$ as it should only be a case of "fan stop" on one side or the same drills as a bird strike but clearly hoping it it doesn't come through a windshield like this....... https://youtu.be/9t5VoP9bNQU

Unless someone creates a power source direct from the a/c to detect and deviate drones from near us then we /enforcement agencies or the manufacturers have ZERO chance of doing anything to mitigate the risk of collision and the size, damage done will just increase.

The ONLY way of mitigating this risk of drone strike and potential catastrophic damage is from the a/c itself.

This actual minor incident has created a major media focus but it will not be long and not take long for this to get out of control, drones will get bigger, technology will advance 1000 times quicker than the regulators can adapt and there will never be sufficient resource to enforce from the ground.

If the mfrs / regulators do not understand the need for control and solution from the a/c then we are all on an ever increasing risk scale before the inevitable. It may be a few years away but be sure it will happen.

Blue skies and sorry for spoiling the first summer weekend of the season ..... the weather was probably the biggest factor in it happening today - less than 10 kts and CAVOK

:uhoh:

Seriously doubt this claim. 20 minute flight time means it would have to get to 12000ft in about 10 mins which is a climb rate of 1200ft/min. (10 minutes to descend under power). Also over 2 miles vertical range would be at limit for the radio (not the ground transmitter but the drone transponders). Doable for a special attempt but not for a casual amateur. IMHO

Well now, how about KTTS and KEDW as starters for ten........

Returning to the thread, here's what I wrote in R&N in November 2014

The funny thing was that at that time I, and the few PPRuNe experts who agreed with that post, were roundly monstered by the R&N majority who saw little harm in drones, live and let live, no real danger from these little toys, got one myself, etc etc.

Has anyone actually confirmed it was a drone? I know that the number of objects it could have been is rather limited, but what physical evidence is there that a drone struck the aircraft?

Tourist, you make me laugh at your ignorance. You obviously have never seen damage caused by some of the smaller birds never mind a large one like a duck or bigger. Enjoy your keyboard as I highly doubt your feet ever leave the ground.

And these swallows are the worst.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=y2R3FvS4xr4