Posted on 10/26/2014 1:57:56 PM PDT by BenLurkin
An airliner came within just 80ft of colliding with a quadcopter drone after it was 'deliberately flown' at the passenger plane as it flew over Essex, an official report reveals.
The 74-seater aeroplane was travelling over Southend when the pilot spotted the remote-controlled quadcopter 'very close' to the right wing-tip.
An investigation launched into the incident recorded the risk of collision as 'high', in what is believed to be the first ever near-miss between a passenger plane and a drone in the UK.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Islamaphobe pilots seeing imaginary muslim threats.
Unless it was sucked into an engine, what kid of damage could one do? Just curious, but aren’t those things pretty small? I would think a goose would be a bigger danger???????
Jihadist attacks; they take many forms. Until these incidents are proven to be otherwise, I will deem them muslim. Vigilance is the watchword. I’m no silly liberal who believes in “moderate islam”, or that it is a peaceful religion. It is most decidedly not a religion..
Dunno, but I agree. Looking for a engine “bird strike” is the terrorist’s best bet.
Say goodbye to your quadcopters, R/C helis, etc.
Uncle Sam is going to be coming after these.
No Constitutional protection.
How much does this suck.
This month Albanian agents disrupted UEFA match by flying drone into soccer stadium. Drone was carrying Albanian banner, but could also have carried biological weapon.
Looks like same MO to me.
Remote shrapnel bomb, mercury dribbler to dissolve an aircraft in flight, pass blinder..
Laser blinder..
Stupid smertfoan doesn’t know laser?
Keeps “correcting” it as pass.
The leading edges of all surfaces are reinforced so a strike would be localized damage. If it was sucked in to an engine it would most likely damage the fan blades costing a lot to fix and ground the plane for repairs. But nothing catastrophic would happen. (Recovering aircraft engineer)
Thanks OP! That’s exactly what I was thinking! Lasers a mercury drips on a little drone? I really, really doubt that!
The max speed of some rc quadricopter is what 20 knots?.. im being way generous....
How the hell are these two ever going to tangle unless its the larger aircraft flying at the quadricopter...
If you were going to try and chase /harass/ threaten a full-size aircraft with any kind of RC aircraft there are plenty that are faster, the last thing you would use is a quadrocopter
with anything of any kind of RC aircraft and full size aircraft tangling with each other it’s about as likely as a full-size aircraft & bird strike....
airports try to keep the birds clear from the take of and landing flight path..and same with with RC aircraft .. they have no reason to operate near and airport and certainly not in the landing and takeoff flight path
Hobbyist quadcopter speed record as of 2013 was 120+ kilometer/hr. Two kg all-up weight. Not a totally negligible amount of kinetic energy.
They are capable of carrying explosives and shrapnel.
“They are capable of carrying explosives and shrapnel.”
Yes, but not a big enough load I don’t think. These things are small. Dangerous? Yes. But not yet, at least I don’t think.
Thanks for posting this as it is an area of keen interest to me. I have a website on the topic.
Here is a blog I put up on the JFK incident where a quadcopter was hovering in the landing path of a jetliner:
“Was the Drone/UAV Hovering in the JFK Landing Approach Kill Zone (LAKZ) a Failed Terrorist Attack?”
Just as terrorists can use GPS guided drone/UAVs to target jet turbines in the Runway Kill Zone (RKZ) as explained in earlier posts to this blog (here), the quad-copter drone that was hovering in the JFK landing approach of an Alitalia jetliner on March 5, 2013 may have been the first terrorist attack in a Landing Approach Kill Zone (LAKZ). News coverage of the story can be seen here.
Using Jeppesen maps, a terrorist can determine the altitude that jetliners are supposed to fly at for each descending leg of a landing approach to a specific runway. At JFK on March 5, 2013, the Alitalia jet was approaching runway 31R. Going on the internet a recent Jeppesen map for that runway shows a leg approximately a mile in length right before Long Beach, NY (where the multi-copter drone was hovering) during which the airliner is supposed to hold steady at 1,900 feet.
Using newly available First-Person View (FPV) video piloting (here) the multi-copters remote pilot could hover the drone at 1,900 feet at the GPS coordinates of the Jeppesen landing approach to JFK runway 31R and visually guide the drone to target one of the jet turbine intakes on the Alitalia airliner.
“visually guide the drone to target one of the jet turbine intakes on the Alitalia airliner.”
Really? At that speed? I don’t think the drones are up to that precise manuvering yet. But they might be working on it!
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