Drone near miss
 

BBC midday news reports a near miss between an Airbus and a drone on approach to Heathhrow. Reported as missing wing by about 60 feet.

Sooner rather than later for a hit.

Full article: https://www.flightglobal.com/news/ar...h-dron-431576/

It happened in July. On a previous thread about drones I was roundly abused for suggesting it is only a matter of time before the holes line up.

I haven't changed my mind.

So they were at ~5,000 feet doing, what, >200mph? Something about the size of a large pizza passed down one side of the aeroplane. Even if visually acquired at the earliest possible stage it would have been visible for 2-3 seconds, and as a detailed view perhaps half a second? Yet in this time the crew positively identified it as "a drone".

http://i925.photobucket.com/albums/a...on%20chart.jpg

They then say it passed over the wing, 20m out from the fuselage, and "over the tailplane". Aside from the detail that the A320 tailplane semispan is under 7m (so it went nowhere near the tailplane) mhow the heck did the crew know this? How much of thie wing is visible from the pilot's seat? Or are we expected to believe that said crew opened the window and stuck their heads out to watch?

The whole report is clearly dubious in the extreme.

I have a perfect view of The Shard and The City approx., 2 miles away from the 400ft AMSL advantage point of a northward facing 4th floor roof top deck ( I almost wrote "sun" deck but this is Crystal Palace I'm talking about!) Most aircraft lining up for Heathrow describe a fairly leisurely 180 turn around the 700ft television transmitter so well that they look to be on strings - though a few do approach directly from the east. By the time they are over the said large pointy building - I have it on pretty good authority - they are around 3000ft and report that to ATC. So there's the first problem with the report - if this aircraft was at 5000 or 4900 - it would be 2/3rds higher than normal.


Looking at my diary - yes, I'm that old fashioned and pedantic - I see that Monday the 18th July was quite a lovely sunny day if a bit breezy and some of my time was spent looking at that view ;however; nothing I saw caused me to write anything about it. Though co-incidentally, there was a very large professional "drone" ( how I hate that term!) being flown locally around the same time but I didn't see it go above say 200ft over my roof level.

Except that the report makes it clear that the aircraft in question wasn't on final approach.

It was on a base leg, not yet having turned right to intercept the 27L ILS, so the height quoted is perfectly normal for that phase.

]
Well Dave we might have another problem there because in the two years I've been watching from here I've never seen any aircraft turning right when over the Shard for Heathrow. You can see aircraft travel north probably for Stanstead transit London at a similar height and of course much lower for London City to the east but everyone else joins from the south and west well over Tulse Hill and make lefthand turns over Crystal Palace.

I see birds everyday from my front left seat, I can usually identify them as gulls, geese, hawks etc.
I also own some "drones" and am confident I could identify them too, fixed wing, multi- quad etc.
I have seen RC planes zooming around low around their RC field from thousands of feet above.
Why is so hard to believe a professional pilot will not be able to ID a runaway DJI phantom passing by?

Some more details:

Aircraft involved was BA A321 G-MEDU, operating BA777 (BAW77C) from Stockholm/Arlanda (ESSA). Inbound via Lambourne, twice round the hold there and then vectored as normal for a 27L approach. Airprox classed as Category A ("Risk of Collision: aircraft proximity in which serious risk of collision has existed")

Links:

BA777 20160718 Flightpath from Heathrow WebTrak

UK Airprox Board Report 2016139

I haven't, either. If they haven't proved deadly dangerous yet, it's only a matter of time.

I'm currently living in north Dover, DE, about seven or eight miles from DAFB and about five miles from the nearest muni field.

I'm in a subdivision which is located in a semi-rural areal, and in the last eight months, I've been pestered by these little flying cameras in my own back yard.

I've taken to blinding them with a good handheld spotlight, which seems to get the operators to reverse or turn on a different heading.

But, they're out there, and if they're flying around here where there is literally nothing to look at, the same inconsiderate pieces of trash are probably flying them in visually richer areas.

Pilot or pax, if you're intent on calling all of these encounters "birds," you're just putting off realizing and dealing with the same kind of sh*tstorm powerful, cheap, handheld lasers created.

How high do drones fly? Isn't 4,900ft a bit high for them?

Lots of drone footage from Mt. Everest Base Camp (17,600ft) on YouTube...

Mid-size consumer drones can easily fly above 10,000 ft, unless restricted in firmware, with a suitable radio controller.

Aircraft over that part of London are considerably higher than 3000 feet these days. With Continuous Descent Approaches and being over 13 nm from touchdown they are at least 4000 feet (if not more).

Modified or in "error" mode : as high as the battery will take them.

An anecdote heard during a recent UAS symposium : F/O of well known European airline buys a high end drone for around 1000 USD in Bangkok.
He wants to try it near hotel pool before taking it home. The thing shoots up vertically and is unresponsive to the ( possibly incorrect) iPad commands. It climbs until out of sight ...stuck it its vertical climb mode. Never to be seen again ..

And yes, it is only a matter of time unfortunately...

Details of the other drone incidents referred to by FlightGlobal on the two preceding days, both involving BA aircraft on Biggin arrivals for 27L:

The first was BA A320 G-EUUE operating BA547 (BAW8CF) from Rome (LIRF) over Greenwich at 1850Z on Saturday July 16th, Airprox Category: A

BA547 Flightpath from Heathrow WebTrak
UK Airprox Board Report 2016142

The second was BA A319 G-EUPS operating BA531 (BAW531) from Split (LDSP) over Isleworth at 1736Z on Sunday July 17th, Airprox Category: B ("Safety not assured: aircraft proximity in which the safety of the aircraft may have been compromised")

BA531 Flightpath from Heathrow WebTrak
UK Airprox Board Report 2016137

These days lots of drones have real-time "first person view" camera feed with digital information overlay, making it easy to fly them arbitrarily high / far away:

http://i.imgur.com/AkdPX5d.jpg?1
(Picture from DL Engineering)

Getting back on topic, some scary stats from the UKAB.

Of the 133 Airprox reports published so far this year (up to mid-July), 40 involved encounters with drones and of those, 32 were reported by aircraft performing scheduled passenger flights.

That's more than one a week on average ...

Time to buy a l@ser to annoy the drone(s)? ;)

way of the future
 

This problem can be solved with straight forward implementation of sensible tech.

https://www.nokia.com/en_int/news/re...in-the-country

Won't stop the malicious, but given these things already need to carry the necessary comms and nav, the cell network and associated tech is the obvious and ideal tool. Might help sort out the larger chaps too.

Another incident, potentially serious?

Football-sized drone flown 20m from Heathrow-bound plane - BBC News