12 ms·

Drone hits British Airways plane approaching Heathrow Airport

111 points by k-mcgrady 11y ago

chinathrow 11y ago
The plane has been cleared for the next flight already. https://www.aeroinside.com/item/7392/british-airways-a320-at-london-on-apr-17th-2016-drone-impacts-aircraft https://www.aeroinside.com/item/7392/british-airways-a320-at...
clavalle 11y ago
This raises the very important question: is the fear of drones hitting planes completely overblown?
- timthelion 11y ago
  Given that the plane didn't have any trouble landing, and they hit birds all the time, I think that this might show that it's fine to hit a drone so long as it isn't sucked into the engine ;)
- jpollock 11y ago
  A canada goose can weigh from 7-14 lbs, ducks are much smaller (3.5lbs). We test planes against bird strike. However, birds don't have screws and batteries. Even with that, they bring down planes (AWE1549) There is a reason why airports are very, very careful about the vehicles that drive onto runways - FOD (foreign object damage) is a very real thing with very severe consequences when a plane is on approach and take-off.
  - nkurz 11y ago
    However, birds don't have screws and batteries. This often gets mentioned (and is obviously true) but I'm doubtful (but not certain) that it makes that much difference. Things we think about as "soft" can be remarkably hard at high velocity. At 120 mph terminal velocity, water and concrete are similarly fatal: the incompressibility matters more than the hardness. This isn't to say that drone strikes are not an issue, only that I don't think they are significantly more of an issue than bird strikes. And birds can do a lot of damage at several hundred miles per hour. When you are hit by one, whether it's filled with bones or metal probably isn't the biggest concern.
    - molecule 11y ago
      > Things we think about as "soft" can be remarkably hard at high velocity. At 120 mph terminal velocity, water and concrete are similarly fatal: the incompressibility matters more than the hardness. And yet planes fly through clouds and rain at several hundred mph without issue, though the same wouldn't be said about flying through concrete... The issue here is relative hardness. Bone is relatively soft to titanium turbine blades, whereas screws and titanium turbine blades are in the same ballpark of hardness, so are catastrophic when they meet when spinning @ several thousand rpm...
      - deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
    - jpollock 11y ago
      I don't have any experimental data, but my mental models pull up: 1) chucking a chicken bone into an insinkerator vs a penny. 2) a hunk of wood vs a hunk of wood with a nail through a wood chipper.
      - nkurz 11y ago
        Good examples, although I wonder if the relatively low speed makes a difference. The closest comparable that I can find is this: http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/mythbusters/videos/chicken-gun-minimyth/ http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/mythbusters/videos/chicken... They shoot a frozen versus thawed chicken out of an air cannon, and conclude that the impact force is identical for both. I'm pretty sure that adding some metal bits inside both chickens wouldn't make much difference. Density would make a big difference though. A basketball and a 1.75" lead ball have about the same mass, but the lead ball is going to do much more damage. But not because it's harder, but because it's dense and cohesive. I'd guess that a drone of comparable weight to a goose is going to have a greater impact area, even though some of the internal bits are much harder, and I'd guess this is going to be more important for the level of damage. Here's an article that supports that view that mass is the main factor: http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/drones/what-might-happen-if-airliner-hit-small-drone http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/drones/what-migh... Here's more discussion (which I haven't read yet, and which may well contradict my instinct): http://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/26223/would-a-drone-strike-be-more-dangerous-than-a-bird-strike http://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/26223/would-a-dr...
- mc32 11y ago
  Depends on the size and mass of the drone(s) and where they impact the plane (fuselage, window, turbines, etc.)
- youngtaff 11y ago
  Really hard to tell as we don't know enough about the incident. We don't know how large the drone was or what part of the aircraft it hit, for example what happens if one of the larger commercial drones gets ingested into the engine. If you want to an example of what even a bird can do to a plane see this picture - http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/03/13/12/3226FEF600000578-3490044-image-m-21_1457871270219.jpg http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/03/13/12/3226FEF60000057...
  - smoyer 11y ago
    Many plane's "noses" are non-metallic so that the front-facing radar can be placed at the front of the aircraft. The ones I've seen are often fiberglass and are pretty weak. Breaking the plastic has very little impact on the ability of the aircraft to fly (compared to sucking a bird into an engine for instance). The USAir flight that ended up in the Hudson river was disabled by striking a flock of Canadian geese (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chesley_Sullenberger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chesley_Sullenberger)
    - x1798DE 11y ago
      I never noticed that that guy's name is "Chesley". I wonder how often he gets people thinking that's a typo for "Chelsey" or something of that nature.
    - sokoloff 11y ago
      There are a few good shots of the Delta BOS->SLC flight that made an emergency landing in Denver after encountering a hailstorm en route: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3193043/Captain-s-cool-ice-call-tower-say-windshield-smashed-hail-needs-make-emergency-landing-baseball-sized-hail-cracked-windshield-damaged-nose.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3193043/Captain-s-co...
      - smoyer 11y ago
        Wow! ... I'm assuming the pilot had no radar and (almost?) no visibility. The glide path antennas and receivers must have been intact but I'm not sure I'd have the nerve to trust a blind, hands-off landing in a damaged aircraft!
- robert_tweed 11y ago
  I suppose intent matters too. A drone hitting a plane by mistake is apparently not unlike a bird strike, but how do you tell if a given drone has an explosive payload and is being aimed intentionally at an engine intake? It's only a matter of time. It makes sense to keep drones out of airport flightpaths. More sense than most of the post-911 security theatre, at least.
  - NinjaViking 11y ago
    And do you think that somebody who packs his drone with C4 and aims it at passenger aircraft is going to care if he is violating a flightpath? Forbidden is not the same as impossible.
    - Avshalom 11y ago
      Right but 'it is illegal to put a drone in this airspace' gives us permission to shoot down anything in a flight path before impact, including the ones with C4.
      - arjie 11y ago
        What weapons does one use to shoot down a toy drone? You can't miss because on the other side, there are people, and if it hits, it shouldn't lead to dangerous parts all over the runway.
        Avshalom 11y ago
        I think right now the idea is generally a bigger faster one with a net.
        arjie 11y ago
        That's a clever one. More importantly, it makes for an amusing picture.
        11y ago
- melling 11y ago
  Depends on how much C4 is attached to it. Seriously, you're talking about hundreds of lives and a few hundred million dollars of equipment. Why do you want to take the one in a million chance?
- 7952 11y ago
  Surely aviation safety is based on trying to eliminate or mitigate low probability threats. It may be irrational to worry about drone hits for a single flight, but across all flights everywhere it could contribute to a crash. This is well understood in areas like radio transmission where you need a licence to use frequencies. It would be nice if everyone could transmit at high power on any frequency, but we don't have the systems to deal with that safely so their has to be enforced regulation.
  - nkurz 11y ago
    Surely aviation safety is based on trying to eliminate or mitigate low probability threats. Yes, this is part of the equation, but you also need to balance your efforts based on the "risk landscape". Spending effort in one place generally means that less effort is spent elsewhere. I think it's a direct parallel to optimizing code: measure first, then optimize. Making your inner loop 10% faster will make a difference, while speeding up your logging won't. Or vice versa, if you have no single inner loop and your logging is abysmally slow: measure first! If it turns out that drones have 1000x the per impact likelihood of causing a fatality than impact with a birds, but that you are 100000x more likely to hit a bird than a drone, then are you better off spending your efforts on reducing the risk of drone impacts or bird impacts? Or (seemingly perversely) is it better just to tolerate both risks as they are if measurements suggest greater return by concentrating your efforts on improving airport security (or mental health checks for pilots, or testing English proficiency, or even traffic safety on the way to the airport). In this case, my guess would be that adding regulations to reduce the risk of accidental drone strikes by aircraft will have negligible returns, that common sense "don't fly near airport runways" is sufficient, and that there is lower hanging fruit that makes more sense to concentrate on. Normal Accidents by Charles Perrow is an excellent book if you are interested in this topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_Accidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_Accidents
    - nmrm2 11y ago
      It's really not clear to me that there's a trade-off between bird impact prevention and drone prevention (or anything else you mention) for two reasons. First, effort allocation isn't really a compelling explanation -- most of the world just doesn't work in those types of zero-sum terms. Drones are sexy; just because government or industry is willing to fund research and development on safe drone-airplane regulations now doesn't mean it's willing to allocate those same resources to something else. Second, even when resource allocation is strictly zero-sum, the sorts of calculations you suggest are mostly a matter of qualitative speculation about the future. Which means you're mostly just going through a number crunching process that "confirms" your prior beliefs. > that common sense "don't fly near airport runways" is sufficient I think the major challenge that incidents like this one demonstrate is that it might no longer be sufficient to assume pilots have common sense.
- bradleyjg 11y ago
  Even if the fear of bringing down a plane and killing everyone on board is overblown, what about doing thousands of dollars worth of damage and delaying a whole bunch of people in their travel plans? And what's tradeoff to this risk? A bunch of hobbiests who want no regulation of thier hobby? Who's going to compensate the airlines and the delayed passengers?
  - dwild 11y ago
    Have you read the article? There's regulations, what he was doing was illegal and as the article say, can be punished with up to 5 years in prison. You can add as much regulation as you want, it won't change that it can be done the same way it already been done.
    - bradleyjg 11y ago
      You can have mandatory registration. That seems to work pretty well for guns in the UK.
- benhue 11y ago
  From the sounds of it they just don't know and need to fund some research. "And pilots have also called for the DoT to fund tests into what would happen if a drone got sucked into an engine or crashed into a plane's windscreen." "Last month, the British Airline Pilots Association noted that while the threat of bird strikes had been well researched there was little data about how much damage a drone could cause a plane." I wonder if any other organisations have conducted any rigorous testing?
  - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
    A British Airways spokesman said: "Our aircraft landed safely, was fully examined by our engineers and it was cleared to operate its next flight."
- InclinedPlane 11y ago
  A large drone hitting the engine of a jumbojet during takeoff or landing would be very bad news. Not only would it cost maybe millions of dollars of damage it might down the plane.
awinter-py 11y ago
If you're a C-SPAN junkie like me you look forward with christmas-morning glee to the call-in episodes about drone laws. There is exactly one type of person who wakes up at 5am to hold the line for 30 minutes to ask a question about drones, and it is (you guessed it) local yokels who are planning to shoot a drone down and looking for permission. The anti-vaxxers know more science words but the anti-drone crowd is much more entertaining.
- threeseed 11y ago
  Please don't associate anti-vaxxers with the anti-drone crowd. People have actually gotten sick and died from preventable diseases caught from unvaccinated children. And I can't imagine many people are suggesting drones be banned. But many including myself believe they do need to be regulated and situations like this are why.
  - matheweis 11y ago
    All due respect, but I think op is accurate... I say this as an immunocompromised individual fully understanding the weight of your analogy. Many of the recently enacted regulations are driven by fear and hyperbole, with very little understanding of the technologies and real risks involved. This is in fact the very same position from which the anti-vax crowd pleads their cause. Further, drones are very capable of saving lives, and many recently enacted regulations are actively preventing their involvement in life-saving activities that would otherwise have been both safe and legal. I could go on for paragraphs about how the current regulations in the US in particular are a complete joke that do absolutely nothing to improve the safety of drone operations - and in some cases actually encourage riskier ones.
  - jjoonathan 11y ago
    "Regulated" can mean anything from "enforcement of reasonable precaution" to "banned on the basis of irrational fear." Existing regulations already meet the former standard IMO -- it's not like the drone operator was operating legally and will get away scott-free even if caught. > A Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) spokesman said it was "totally unacceptable" to fly drones close to airports, and anyone flouting the rules can face "severe penalties, including imprisonment" Calls to "regulate" are then actually calls to increase bureaucratic barriers and harshen penalties, which will likely have a disproportionately large impact on legitimate applications of the technology and a disproportionately small impact on those who choose, as this drone operator did, to break the rules.
adam12 11y ago
Title makes it sound like a US military drone shot down a passenger plane.
- jrockway 11y ago
  "Toy airplane seen near passenger plane" doesn't bring in the ad views.
  - timthorn 11y ago
    Neither does anything else on BBC websites (acknowledged that outside the UK, ads are present, but BBC Worldwide is so divorced from the BBC News website journos that it is irrelevant)
  - FireBeyond 11y ago
    "$1500 'toy' hits passenger plane". Yours is a little dismissive. I love drones, though I don't own one, though I do have two RC helicopters (the 'proper' ones, like an Align Trex, not a $20 mall toy) but your interpretation isn't the greatest.
    - jrockway 11y ago
      My complaint is the word "drone". It's designed to sound scarier than it is. The previous generation called them "model airplanes". Language evolves and all that, but also introduces bias. The "done scare" would never be a popular thing if someone hadn't come up with a scary word for model airplanes. (But I agree that "model airplane" isn't that great of a term for some of the higher-end photography drones. It's more than just a toy, it's an interesting tool for filmmaking. I'm still not all that afraid of them, however.)
      - chrismcb 11y ago
        That's because model airplanes tend to model an airplane. Quad copiers don't model anything. Drone is a fine word.
      - 11y ago
smoyer 11y ago
It used to be that incidents like these would be reported as UFOs. I wonder if someone had advanced drone technology 50 (ish) years ago? Or are some of the current "sightings" UFOs but there's now a plausible explanation (drones). The most curious report is the drone with the "balloon-like center" - might this have been reported as a weather balloon in the past? Note: I'm using the term UFO as it's original acronym and don't mean to imply they're flown by the proverbial little green men. EDIT: I'm using the term "little green men" in the gender neutral form and am not intentionally impuning the flying capabilities of little green women.
- transman 11y ago
  I would suggest "green people", however, that would be speciesism, and according to another HN headline, we should probably avoid that [1]. To be very clear, as a transman, I'm particularly sensitive to gendered words. I think it's very important to take context into account. For example, I took great offense at the recent "corporate democratic whore" comment [2]. On the flip side, sometimes people can be a bit too sensitive! Personally, I really got a chuckle out of your edit! [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11515108 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11515108 [2] http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/04/14/speaker_at_sanders_rally_calls_hillary_clinton_a_corporate_democratic_whore.html http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/04/14/speaker_at...
  - smoyer 11y ago
    I'm glad you read the EDIT with the humor that was intended ... and in regards to speciesism, I wonder how the dolphins would feel [1]. I'm from the US where we've used the male pronouns as gender neutral for a long time but I'm really getting tired of arguments over gender, arguments over race, arguments over class. I've been thinking that it would be wonderful if we could ignore our differences, accept each other and simply refer to ourselves and our species as "us". (I know we're a long way from that now, but it's Sunday so I can do some dreaming). [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11515108 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11515108
    - 11y ago
microcolonel 11y ago
Why don't they just shoot them down when they approach airports? Seems like a much more measured and appropriate response than "no drones anywhere without documents".
- nmrm2 11y ago
  Routinely shooting down aircraft near a busy commercial airport. What could possibly go wrong?!
  - microcolonel 11y ago
    Well, not shooting them down seems like it could go much worse. I'd hate to get one of those in an engine. Think what a terrorist could do with this though. Legislating it will only really stop people who don't intend to fly small aircraft into a no-fly-zone anyway.
    - nmrm2 11y ago
      > not shooting them down seems like it could go much worse Sure. But a sensible policy would also minimize the amount of weapons that are deployed in heavily trafficked airspace. That is why the sensible approach is to heavily regulate or even by-default prohibit UAV traffic anywhere near airports or common commercial aircraft routes. In other words, parent post is a false dichotomy. It's possible to design and enforce regulations that 1) minimize danger and 2) enable aircraft controllers and the military to address rogue UAVs before they enter heavily trafficked civilian airspaces. Those regulations should go far beyond "shoot-to-kill near airports", but also don't have to be as encompassing as current bans. Simply deploying weapons in commercial airspace as a complete alternative to legislation and regulation is insane. > Legislating it will only really stop people who don't intend to fly small aircraft into a no-fly-zone anyway. I think you under-estimate the size of the group of people who do dangerous shit without malicious intent. Look at the list of incidents at the end of the article, for instance, and guess at how many of those were intentional. Furthermore, even in the case of malicious intent, crafting regulation that clearly and unambiguously sets expectations can allow regulators and the military to deploy counter-measures long before doing so creates an unacceptable risk to surrounding civilians and infrastructure.
aaron695 11y ago
I call total bullshit. How could a pilot even tell? There was no damage. Did they hear it hit over the engine? Ha. The first time a drone hits a plane it's going to be from terrorist activity. They don't accidentally hit planes as we see from the 1000s of 'near misses' but not a single hit.
- threeseed 11y ago
  What are you on about ? I think we can safely assume that British Airways pilots/officials have not fabricated this report and genuinely believe a drone has struck the aircraft. And why would you think it would have come from a terrorist. Far more likely to be some kid who got a drone for Christmas and interested in visiting an airport.
  - RealityVoid 11y ago
    To be honest, the article is thin on details and full of speculations. The pilot thinks he struck something resembling a drone but I doubt he would be able to tell the nature of the object from a moving plane. The reason I greatly doubt it is a drone is that the number of drones is relatively low while the number of birds is high. There are economic and legal incentives for _not_ flying close to airports so I think the number of possible accidents is massively overblown. In light of these facts, I await more proof of the fact it was a drone, because now, I see none. I don't believe that the British Airways have fabricated this report, it's just that they don't seem to be sure of if being a drone themselves.
beedogs 11y ago
Who are these clowns flying drones near airports, anyways?
basicplus2 11y ago
Surely the main issue here is the risk of someone filling a drone with explosives.
- Piskvorrr 11y ago
  Um, no. E=m*v^2, note that the energy rises with the square of velocity. Just hitting a quickly spinning blade on a fast flying machine is quite sufficient for massive damage. http://www.suasnews.com/2015/11/vt-researchers-study-jet-engines-ingesting-drones/ http://www.suasnews.com/2015/11/vt-researchers-study-jet-eng...

111 points by k-mcgrady 11y ago

The plane has been cleared for the next flight already. https://www.aeroinside.com/item/7392/british-airways-a320-at-london-on-apr-17th-2016-drone-impacts-aircraft https://www.aeroinside.com/item/7392/british-airways-a320-at...

clavalle 11y ago

This raises the very important question: is the fear of drones hitting planes completely overblown?

timthelion 11y ago
Given that the plane didn't have any trouble landing, and they hit birds all the time, I think that this might show that it's fine to hit a drone so long as it isn't sucked into the engine ;)
jpollock 11y ago
A canada goose can weigh from 7-14 lbs, ducks are much smaller (3.5lbs). We test planes against bird strike. However, birds don't have screws and batteries. Even with that, they bring down planes (AWE1549) There is a reason why airports are very, very careful about the vehicles that drive onto runways - FOD (foreign object damage) is a very real thing with very severe consequences when a plane is on approach and take-off.
- nkurz 11y ago
  However, birds don't have screws and batteries. This often gets mentioned (and is obviously true) but I'm doubtful (but not certain) that it makes that much difference. Things we think about as "soft" can be remarkably hard at high velocity. At 120 mph terminal velocity, water and concrete are similarly fatal: the incompressibility matters more than the hardness. This isn't to say that drone strikes are not an issue, only that I don't think they are significantly more of an issue than bird strikes. And birds can do a lot of damage at several hundred miles per hour. When you are hit by one, whether it's filled with bones or metal probably isn't the biggest concern.
  - molecule 11y ago
    > Things we think about as "soft" can be remarkably hard at high velocity. At 120 mph terminal velocity, water and concrete are similarly fatal: the incompressibility matters more than the hardness. And yet planes fly through clouds and rain at several hundred mph without issue, though the same wouldn't be said about flying through concrete... The issue here is relative hardness. Bone is relatively soft to titanium turbine blades, whereas screws and titanium turbine blades are in the same ballpark of hardness, so are catastrophic when they meet when spinning @ several thousand rpm...
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
  - jpollock 11y ago
    I don't have any experimental data, but my mental models pull up: 1) chucking a chicken bone into an insinkerator vs a penny. 2) a hunk of wood vs a hunk of wood with a nail through a wood chipper.
    - nkurz 11y ago
      Good examples, although I wonder if the relatively low speed makes a difference. The closest comparable that I can find is this: http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/mythbusters/videos/chicken-gun-minimyth/ http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/mythbusters/videos/chicken... They shoot a frozen versus thawed chicken out of an air cannon, and conclude that the impact force is identical for both. I'm pretty sure that adding some metal bits inside both chickens wouldn't make much difference. Density would make a big difference though. A basketball and a 1.75" lead ball have about the same mass, but the lead ball is going to do much more damage. But not because it's harder, but because it's dense and cohesive. I'd guess that a drone of comparable weight to a goose is going to have a greater impact area, even though some of the internal bits are much harder, and I'd guess this is going to be more important for the level of damage. Here's an article that supports that view that mass is the main factor: http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/drones/what-might-happen-if-airliner-hit-small-drone http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/drones/what-migh... Here's more discussion (which I haven't read yet, and which may well contradict my instinct): http://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/26223/would-a-drone-strike-be-more-dangerous-than-a-bird-strike http://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/26223/would-a-dr...
mc32 11y ago
Depends on the size and mass of the drone(s) and where they impact the plane (fuselage, window, turbines, etc.)
youngtaff 11y ago
Really hard to tell as we don't know enough about the incident. We don't know how large the drone was or what part of the aircraft it hit, for example what happens if one of the larger commercial drones gets ingested into the engine. If you want to an example of what even a bird can do to a plane see this picture - http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/03/13/12/3226FEF600000578-3490044-image-m-21_1457871270219.jpg http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/03/13/12/3226FEF60000057...
- smoyer 11y ago
  Many plane's "noses" are non-metallic so that the front-facing radar can be placed at the front of the aircraft. The ones I've seen are often fiberglass and are pretty weak. Breaking the plastic has very little impact on the ability of the aircraft to fly (compared to sucking a bird into an engine for instance). The USAir flight that ended up in the Hudson river was disabled by striking a flock of Canadian geese (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chesley_Sullenberger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chesley_Sullenberger)
  - x1798DE 11y ago
    I never noticed that that guy's name is "Chesley". I wonder how often he gets people thinking that's a typo for "Chelsey" or something of that nature.
  - sokoloff 11y ago
    There are a few good shots of the Delta BOS->SLC flight that made an emergency landing in Denver after encountering a hailstorm en route: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3193043/Captain-s-cool-ice-call-tower-say-windshield-smashed-hail-needs-make-emergency-landing-baseball-sized-hail-cracked-windshield-damaged-nose.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3193043/Captain-s-co...
    - smoyer 11y ago
      Wow! ... I'm assuming the pilot had no radar and (almost?) no visibility. The glide path antennas and receivers must have been intact but I'm not sure I'd have the nerve to trust a blind, hands-off landing in a damaged aircraft!
robert_tweed 11y ago
I suppose intent matters too. A drone hitting a plane by mistake is apparently not unlike a bird strike, but how do you tell if a given drone has an explosive payload and is being aimed intentionally at an engine intake? It's only a matter of time. It makes sense to keep drones out of airport flightpaths. More sense than most of the post-911 security theatre, at least.
- NinjaViking 11y ago
  And do you think that somebody who packs his drone with C4 and aims it at passenger aircraft is going to care if he is violating a flightpath? Forbidden is not the same as impossible.
  - Avshalom 11y ago
    Right but 'it is illegal to put a drone in this airspace' gives us permission to shoot down anything in a flight path before impact, including the ones with C4.
    - arjie 11y ago
      What weapons does one use to shoot down a toy drone? You can't miss because on the other side, there are people, and if it hits, it shouldn't lead to dangerous parts all over the runway.
      - Avshalom 11y ago
        I think right now the idea is generally a bigger faster one with a net.
        arjie 11y ago
        That's a clever one. More importantly, it makes for an amusing picture.
        11y ago
melling 11y ago
Depends on how much C4 is attached to it. Seriously, you're talking about hundreds of lives and a few hundred million dollars of equipment. Why do you want to take the one in a million chance?
7952 11y ago
Surely aviation safety is based on trying to eliminate or mitigate low probability threats. It may be irrational to worry about drone hits for a single flight, but across all flights everywhere it could contribute to a crash. This is well understood in areas like radio transmission where you need a licence to use frequencies. It would be nice if everyone could transmit at high power on any frequency, but we don't have the systems to deal with that safely so their has to be enforced regulation.
- nkurz 11y ago
  Surely aviation safety is based on trying to eliminate or mitigate low probability threats. Yes, this is part of the equation, but you also need to balance your efforts based on the "risk landscape". Spending effort in one place generally means that less effort is spent elsewhere. I think it's a direct parallel to optimizing code: measure first, then optimize. Making your inner loop 10% faster will make a difference, while speeding up your logging won't. Or vice versa, if you have no single inner loop and your logging is abysmally slow: measure first! If it turns out that drones have 1000x the per impact likelihood of causing a fatality than impact with a birds, but that you are 100000x more likely to hit a bird than a drone, then are you better off spending your efforts on reducing the risk of drone impacts or bird impacts? Or (seemingly perversely) is it better just to tolerate both risks as they are if measurements suggest greater return by concentrating your efforts on improving airport security (or mental health checks for pilots, or testing English proficiency, or even traffic safety on the way to the airport). In this case, my guess would be that adding regulations to reduce the risk of accidental drone strikes by aircraft will have negligible returns, that common sense "don't fly near airport runways" is sufficient, and that there is lower hanging fruit that makes more sense to concentrate on. Normal Accidents by Charles Perrow is an excellent book if you are interested in this topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_Accidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_Accidents
  - nmrm2 11y ago
    It's really not clear to me that there's a trade-off between bird impact prevention and drone prevention (or anything else you mention) for two reasons. First, effort allocation isn't really a compelling explanation -- most of the world just doesn't work in those types of zero-sum terms. Drones are sexy; just because government or industry is willing to fund research and development on safe drone-airplane regulations now doesn't mean it's willing to allocate those same resources to something else. Second, even when resource allocation is strictly zero-sum, the sorts of calculations you suggest are mostly a matter of qualitative speculation about the future. Which means you're mostly just going through a number crunching process that "confirms" your prior beliefs. > that common sense "don't fly near airport runways" is sufficient I think the major challenge that incidents like this one demonstrate is that it might no longer be sufficient to assume pilots have common sense.
bradleyjg 11y ago
Even if the fear of bringing down a plane and killing everyone on board is overblown, what about doing thousands of dollars worth of damage and delaying a whole bunch of people in their travel plans? And what's tradeoff to this risk? A bunch of hobbiests who want no regulation of thier hobby? Who's going to compensate the airlines and the delayed passengers?
- dwild 11y ago
  Have you read the article? There's regulations, what he was doing was illegal and as the article say, can be punished with up to 5 years in prison. You can add as much regulation as you want, it won't change that it can be done the same way it already been done.
  - bradleyjg 11y ago
    You can have mandatory registration. That seems to work pretty well for guns in the UK.
benhue 11y ago
From the sounds of it they just don't know and need to fund some research. "And pilots have also called for the DoT to fund tests into what would happen if a drone got sucked into an engine or crashed into a plane's windscreen." "Last month, the British Airline Pilots Association noted that while the threat of bird strikes had been well researched there was little data about how much damage a drone could cause a plane." I wonder if any other organisations have conducted any rigorous testing?
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  A British Airways spokesman said: "Our aircraft landed safely, was fully examined by our engineers and it was cleared to operate its next flight."
InclinedPlane 11y ago
A large drone hitting the engine of a jumbojet during takeoff or landing would be very bad news. Not only would it cost maybe millions of dollars of damage it might down the plane.

awinter-py 11y ago

If you're a C-SPAN junkie like me you look forward with christmas-morning glee to the call-in episodes about drone laws. There is exactly one type of person who wakes up at 5am to hold the line for 30 minutes to ask a question about drones, and it is (you guessed it) local yokels who are planning to shoot a drone down and looking for permission. The anti-vaxxers know more science words but the anti-drone crowd is much more entertaining.

threeseed 11y ago
Please don't associate anti-vaxxers with the anti-drone crowd. People have actually gotten sick and died from preventable diseases caught from unvaccinated children. And I can't imagine many people are suggesting drones be banned. But many including myself believe they do need to be regulated and situations like this are why.
- matheweis 11y ago
  All due respect, but I think op is accurate... I say this as an immunocompromised individual fully understanding the weight of your analogy. Many of the recently enacted regulations are driven by fear and hyperbole, with very little understanding of the technologies and real risks involved. This is in fact the very same position from which the anti-vax crowd pleads their cause. Further, drones are very capable of saving lives, and many recently enacted regulations are actively preventing their involvement in life-saving activities that would otherwise have been both safe and legal. I could go on for paragraphs about how the current regulations in the US in particular are a complete joke that do absolutely nothing to improve the safety of drone operations - and in some cases actually encourage riskier ones.
- jjoonathan 11y ago
  "Regulated" can mean anything from "enforcement of reasonable precaution" to "banned on the basis of irrational fear." Existing regulations already meet the former standard IMO -- it's not like the drone operator was operating legally and will get away scott-free even if caught. > A Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) spokesman said it was "totally unacceptable" to fly drones close to airports, and anyone flouting the rules can face "severe penalties, including imprisonment" Calls to "regulate" are then actually calls to increase bureaucratic barriers and harshen penalties, which will likely have a disproportionately large impact on legitimate applications of the technology and a disproportionately small impact on those who choose, as this drone operator did, to break the rules.

adam12 11y ago

Title makes it sound like a US military drone shot down a passenger plane.

jrockway 11y ago
"Toy airplane seen near passenger plane" doesn't bring in the ad views.
- timthorn 11y ago
  Neither does anything else on BBC websites (acknowledged that outside the UK, ads are present, but BBC Worldwide is so divorced from the BBC News website journos that it is irrelevant)
- FireBeyond 11y ago
  "$1500 'toy' hits passenger plane". Yours is a little dismissive. I love drones, though I don't own one, though I do have two RC helicopters (the 'proper' ones, like an Align Trex, not a $20 mall toy) but your interpretation isn't the greatest.
  - jrockway 11y ago
    My complaint is the word "drone". It's designed to sound scarier than it is. The previous generation called them "model airplanes". Language evolves and all that, but also introduces bias. The "done scare" would never be a popular thing if someone hadn't come up with a scary word for model airplanes. (But I agree that "model airplane" isn't that great of a term for some of the higher-end photography drones. It's more than just a toy, it's an interesting tool for filmmaking. I'm still not all that afraid of them, however.)
    - chrismcb 11y ago
      That's because model airplanes tend to model an airplane. Quad copiers don't model anything. Drone is a fine word.
    - 11y ago

smoyer 11y ago

It used to be that incidents like these would be reported as UFOs. I wonder if someone had advanced drone technology 50 (ish) years ago? Or are some of the current "sightings" UFOs but there's now a plausible explanation (drones). The most curious report is the drone with the "balloon-like center" - might this have been reported as a weather balloon in the past? Note: I'm using the term UFO as it's original acronym and don't mean to imply they're flown by the proverbial little green men. EDIT: I'm using the term "little green men" in the gender neutral form and am not intentionally impuning the flying capabilities of little green women.

transman 11y ago
I would suggest "green people", however, that would be speciesism, and according to another HN headline, we should probably avoid that [1]. To be very clear, as a transman, I'm particularly sensitive to gendered words. I think it's very important to take context into account. For example, I took great offense at the recent "corporate democratic whore" comment [2]. On the flip side, sometimes people can be a bit too sensitive! Personally, I really got a chuckle out of your edit! [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11515108 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11515108 [2] http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/04/14/speaker_at_sanders_rally_calls_hillary_clinton_a_corporate_democratic_whore.html http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/04/14/speaker_at...
- smoyer 11y ago
  I'm glad you read the EDIT with the humor that was intended ... and in regards to speciesism, I wonder how the dolphins would feel [1]. I'm from the US where we've used the male pronouns as gender neutral for a long time but I'm really getting tired of arguments over gender, arguments over race, arguments over class. I've been thinking that it would be wonderful if we could ignore our differences, accept each other and simply refer to ourselves and our species as "us". (I know we're a long way from that now, but it's Sunday so I can do some dreaming). [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11515108 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11515108
  - 11y ago

microcolonel 11y ago

Why don't they just shoot them down when they approach airports? Seems like a much more measured and appropriate response than "no drones anywhere without documents".

nmrm2 11y ago
Routinely shooting down aircraft near a busy commercial airport. What could possibly go wrong?!
- microcolonel 11y ago
  Well, not shooting them down seems like it could go much worse. I'd hate to get one of those in an engine. Think what a terrorist could do with this though. Legislating it will only really stop people who don't intend to fly small aircraft into a no-fly-zone anyway.
  - nmrm2 11y ago
    > not shooting them down seems like it could go much worse Sure. But a sensible policy would also minimize the amount of weapons that are deployed in heavily trafficked airspace. That is why the sensible approach is to heavily regulate or even by-default prohibit UAV traffic anywhere near airports or common commercial aircraft routes. In other words, parent post is a false dichotomy. It's possible to design and enforce regulations that 1) minimize danger and 2) enable aircraft controllers and the military to address rogue UAVs before they enter heavily trafficked civilian airspaces. Those regulations should go far beyond "shoot-to-kill near airports", but also don't have to be as encompassing as current bans. Simply deploying weapons in commercial airspace as a complete alternative to legislation and regulation is insane. > Legislating it will only really stop people who don't intend to fly small aircraft into a no-fly-zone anyway. I think you under-estimate the size of the group of people who do dangerous shit without malicious intent. Look at the list of incidents at the end of the article, for instance, and guess at how many of those were intentional. Furthermore, even in the case of malicious intent, crafting regulation that clearly and unambiguously sets expectations can allow regulators and the military to deploy counter-measures long before doing so creates an unacceptable risk to surrounding civilians and infrastructure.

aaron695 11y ago

I call total bullshit. How could a pilot even tell? There was no damage. Did they hear it hit over the engine? Ha. The first time a drone hits a plane it's going to be from terrorist activity. They don't accidentally hit planes as we see from the 1000s of 'near misses' but not a single hit.

threeseed 11y ago
What are you on about ? I think we can safely assume that British Airways pilots/officials have not fabricated this report and genuinely believe a drone has struck the aircraft. And why would you think it would have come from a terrorist. Far more likely to be some kid who got a drone for Christmas and interested in visiting an airport.
- RealityVoid 11y ago
  To be honest, the article is thin on details and full of speculations. The pilot thinks he struck something resembling a drone but I doubt he would be able to tell the nature of the object from a moving plane. The reason I greatly doubt it is a drone is that the number of drones is relatively low while the number of birds is high. There are economic and legal incentives for _not_ flying close to airports so I think the number of possible accidents is massively overblown. In light of these facts, I await more proof of the fact it was a drone, because now, I see none. I don't believe that the British Airways have fabricated this report, it's just that they don't seem to be sure of if being a drone themselves.

beedogs 11y ago

Who are these clowns flying drones near airports, anyways?

basicplus2 11y ago

Surely the main issue here is the risk of someone filling a drone with explosives.

Piskvorrr 11y ago
Um, no. E=m*v^2, note that the energy rises with the square of velocity. Just hitting a quickly spinning blade on a fast flying machine is quite sufficient for massive damage. http://www.suasnews.com/2015/11/vt-researchers-study-jet-engines-ingesting-drones/ http://www.suasnews.com/2015/11/vt-researchers-study-jet-eng...