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-copter’s 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!
I’m in the aviation business. As a dispatcher, I have all the updated Jepps on my desktop. Any Hussein or Acmed can get a Jeppesen subscription, and put a drone right on the initial or final approach fix...or right after departure during the clean up phase..