8 ms·

Drones Flying Near Newark Liberty Airport Temporarily Halt Flights

49 points by jbegley 8y ago

WillPostForFood 8y ago
I understand approaching this with an abundance of caution, but the drones were reportedly 17 miles away near a different airport, so this looks like quite an overreaction.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- vkou 8y ago
  Unless you have an incredibly deep understanding of air traffic control protocols, I don't think you can make this judgement. Consider that drones may not show up on radar, restricted air space around airports can change at a moment's notice, they cannot be avoided through visual identification, airplanes need a long distance to drop/gain altitude when landing/taking off, airplanes need vertical buffer when sharing airspace with other airplanes, and that much aerial maneuvering and control happens at the speed of humans talking in technical jargon to other humans. Even if no planned flight needs the airspace, the drone may be in buffer airspace that would be used for emergency complications. The drone pilot was grossly irresponsible to fly where they did, and should be in jail.
  - trhway 8y ago
    Did he violate any specific rules?
    - vkou 8y ago
      Yes, he violated the specific rule that limits drone activity to below 400 feet. It was flying at 3,500 feet. The operator is either dangerously ignorant, or reckless.
      - trhway 8y ago
        well, while it is a violation, i think they paid so much attention to it because the Teterboro is in the direction of the main runway at EWR. Anyway, looks like an airspace full of fun: http://vfrmap.com/?type=vfrc&lat=40.692&lon=-74.169&zoom=10 http://vfrmap.com/?type=vfrc&lat=40.692&lon=-74.169&zoom=10
    - rixrax 8y ago
      In case this would have been drone flight falling under 14CFR part 107, at least these come to mind. - 107.41: over Tererboro airport and did not appear to have contacted ATC (air traffic control) and/or obtained waiver to operate in class B-E airspace - 107.51: They flew above 400 feet - 107.31: did not maintain VLOS with their drone (Visual Line of Sight) - 107.43: interfered with operation of airport - 107.39: possibly flew UAS over people - 107.51: possibly within 500 feet vertically or 2000 feet horizontally from clouds - 107.37: possibly (b) No person may operate a small unmanned aircraft so close to another aircraft as to create a collision hazard Under CFR 14 part 107 you could request an waiver from FAA for a specific mission to fly above 400ft or outside VLOS or within different class airspace’s etc. 107.21 states also: In an in-flight emergency requiring immediate action, the remote pilot in command may deviate from any rule of this part to the extent necessary to meet that emergency. I suspect they had not. Summary of FAApart 107: https://www.faa.gov/uas/media/Part_107_Summary.pdf https://www.faa.gov/uas/media/Part_107_Summary.pdf Note: in the us you can also fly under section 336 (model aircrafts) or under section 333 (pilot licensed remote pilots). But without checking the rules, I think differences would be minimal (e.g. ability obtain waivers, technicalities for ops near airports - e.g. 5 mile rule instead of airspace considerations).
- nomel 8y ago
  For a different perspective, 17 miles is only 5 minutes for a 747 at comfortable landing speed. At normal approach speed, this is much less.
  - bdash 8y ago
    What's more, the two airports are 17 miles apart only if you look at driving distance. It's more like 12 miles as the crow (or an airplane) flies.
- badwolf 8y ago
  I think the key phrase from the article was "The drone was spotted about 3,500 feet over Teterboro Airport" Drone flying at 3500 feet definitely seems like it could pose a risk to flights out of Liberty 17 miles away
  - rootusrootus 8y ago
    n/a
    - cmurf 8y ago
      Ok so you have a pilot certification? Or you have any sort of aviation experience, including air traffic control? Have you ever looked at any aeronautical charts for the area under discussion? Because you're asserting that people who do have aviation experience, did the wrong thing and overreacted. What is your basis? Is this some kind of Dunning Kruger effect? Disclaimer: I am a certified pilot, and a former instrument flight instructor, with a decently tuned bullshit meter that's currently pegged.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
    - dvtrn 8y ago
      Isn't that still WELL above what you're legally allowed to fly a drone even with a 107?
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- bmurphy1976 8y ago
  3500 feet is 3100 feet higher than drone regulations allow. That's the real problem here. If that was in the direct flight path of an airport even 17 miles away this is wildly reckless behavior.
  - blacksmith_tb 8y ago
    Hanlon's razor suggests to me it could be a flyaway (which of course doesn't make it less dangerous to aircraft, just not intentionally reckless).
    - bmurphy1976 8y ago
      I don't think so. Most fly aways in my experience are horizontal not vertical. A quick check of YouTube will show plenty of reckless behavior and my small drone is more than capable of flying at a distance of 3500 feet away from me. Hanlons razor says this was somebody trying to get that sweet picture or see how far they can push their toy.
      - dvtrn 8y ago
        Or wind caught it at a higher altitude. As wind is prone to do.
      - cmurf 8y ago
        Yeah. Sometimes people like to use laser pointers at helicopters and planes. It carries up to five years in prison, and they do get caught, prosecuted and the feds do aggressively pursue maximum prison sentences, whether a pilot is blinded by it or not. And I put letting your toy fly into terminal area airspace in the same category. I don't care if it's intentional or accident. Control your shit, or go to prison.
- cmurf 8y ago
  This is the VFR Terminal Area chart for the airports in question, Teterboro is due north of EWR, http://vfrmap.com/?type=vfrc&lat=40.692&lon=-74.169&zoom=10 http://vfrmap.com/?type=vfrc&lat=40.692&lon=-74.169&zoom=10 and an object near TEB at 3500' is inside the Class B airspace which requires positive control (not merely radar contact, not merely radio contact, but you must have a clearance or you cannot enter class B). TEB is also within 12 miles of EWR, and that's inside the departure/arrival path for EWR's main north south runways. Aircraft inside class B have a guarantee of positive separation by ATC. Everyone has to follow very specific rules in that airspace. And any aircraft that is not under positive control is a threat to all other aircraft. Anyway, it is definitely not an overreaction. Also with the government shutdown, I expect there's next to no one available from FAA or NTSB to do a thorough investigation, most inspectors are not categorized as essential.
- AWildC182 8y ago
  Anecdote: I was flying during instrument training at night and took a laser strike from a small town about 30nm north of a class bravo airport (very large airline hub). When I reported it to approach, they basically closed all the northbound arrival/departure routes and started diverting traffic to the east and west so nobody would overfly the offender. Also, I got to watch a LOT of cop cars light up a minute or two later...
  - c3534l 8y ago
    Pardon my ignorance, but what's a laser strike?
    - BoorishBears 8y ago
      An attempt to blind aviators with a laser pointer
      - spydum 8y ago
        I’ve never understood this - aiming a laser at a vessel moving at over a hundred miles an hour many thousands of feet away seems incredibly harmless, unless you have one gigantic, powerful laser...
        thaumaturgy 8y ago
        When the laser hits the cockpit glass, the whole panel lights up. Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VshPGuKoa2Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VshPGuKoa2Q
        AWildC182 8y ago
        That's probably the mildest case I've seen. When it happened to me the guy was about half the distance and it lit up the whole cockpit.
        sokoloff 8y ago
        I've been hit twice by a ground-based laser. Both times the flashes were bright enough to be disruptive to my adaption to night vision and IMO reduced safety of flight temporarily. I called both into ATC. On one instance, I had the time to hang around and report the location quite accurately and saw the beginning of ground response of police (probably 15+ minutes, though). I wasn't able to stick around and learn the outcome. An EMS helicopter was lased a few months ago resulting in (I think temporary) injury to the crew and a delayed response to an EMS transport mission.
- bdash 8y ago
  The drone was reported over Teterboro at around 3,500ft. One of the ILS approaches into Newark[1] has Teterboro as an initial fix, with a minimum crossing altitude of 3,000ft. That puts the drone exactly where aircraft inbound on that approach will be. [1]: https://aeronav.faa.gov/d-tpp/1901/00285IL22L.PDF https://aeronav.faa.gov/d-tpp/1901/00285IL22L.PDF
stevespang 8y ago
Russian sleeper cells armed with dozens of DJI drones and diplomatic passports so all the police can do is deport them if caught . . .
everdev 8y ago
FYI, here's a video of a drone striking an airplane wing in a test environment: https://youtube.com/watch?v=QH0V7kp-xg0 https://youtube.com/watch?v=QH0V7kp-xg0
- becauseSpecial 8y ago
  The main idea not highlighted by this video: Aviation fuel tanks are frequently held in the wings, and a drone’s charged lithium batteries, when deformed, will arc, burn violently and often explode.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 8y ago
  Can any air people comment on whether that collision would have been fatal to the aircraft? I'm sure it possibly could be, but at what likelihood? Personally I'd be more concerned about a propeller or wind screen strike, but these guys know more about it than me. There's just no good reason to be flying near an airport. On the other hand, if you're five miles away from the nearest airport, the odds of a collision (even if you break the rules r.e. flying in LOS or under a certain ceiling) are just astronomically low. The sky is an enormous place and the odds of two things occupying the same space in it without trying to are once in a century if that. At the current level of density, at any rate. Another thing that strikes me, and probably won't make me popular with pilots on this board: dozens or hundreds of GA pilots get themselves killed every year. Most of the time, this is due to pilot error. Drones represent some amount of increased risk to GA pilots. But, at the current level of drone market penetration, it seems empirically tiny compared to the risks GA pilots already faced voluntarily. I don't know what to do with this observation, except perhaps downgrade my personal concerns about the risks of drone <-> plane incidents.
  - everdev 8y ago
    > The sky is an enormous place and the odds of two things occupying the same space in it without trying to are once in a century if that. Not near an airport. Planes takeoff and land in extremely predictable patterns. And at about the same height as drones typically operate. I think you're thinking of a meteorite hitting an airplane, which yes is probably extremely rare.
the8472 8y ago
The drone did not halt the flights. Administrators halted the flight out of fears over a drone. What I wonder is whether those fears are proportionate. Are drones any worse than a flock of birds? Edit: video from a sibling comment suggests the answer is "yes" for the case of a collision with a wings's leading edge.
- orev 8y ago
  > Are drones any worse than a flock of birds? Yes. A flock of birds has incentive and the means to get out of the way. Drones don't react to their surroundings. Drones are also hard and do more damage than a bird strike.
  - danepowell 8y ago
    I'm skeptical that birds have a means to dodge something moving at hundreds of miles per hour. If anything, a human controlling a drone from a distance has more perspective / ability to dodge a plane than a bird does. Now whether we should actually trust said human to do so... that's a different question, as is the potential damage vs birdstrike.
    - AWildC182 8y ago
      I've nearly hit birds flying (and actually hit one but at night). They're actually not bad at avoiding aircraft going 100+ mph. They'll tuck their wings and dive if they feel they're in danger so typical training is to pull to avoid a strike (and lower the chance it impacts the windscreen). Obviously not all birds are great at this, particularly the larger ones but they do seek to avoid aircraft generally.
- dmitrygr 8y ago
  Why does this keep being asked? YES! drones are a lot more damaging than birds: http://aviationweek.com/bca/faa-study-drones-more-dangerous-birds http://aviationweek.com/bca/faa-study-drones-more-dangerous-... actual report: http://www.assureuas.org/projects/deliverables/sUASAirborneCollisionReport.php http://www.assureuas.org/projects/deliverables/sUASAirborneC...
aaron695 8y ago
Do we really think a pilot traveling at X speed can see a drone at 3,500 feet? Lol, do we really believe this? How dumb are we? Here's a call - the "two" pilots will not have report it independently the second will have heard about the first alleged "sighting". When did common sense become such a rare commodity. Yes, it's always been this way, probably significantly better post internet, but it'd be nice for crazy stuff like this to be shut down sooner.
bronco21016 8y ago
I’m not sure how we could ever gather statistics but I’m really curious if reported drone sightings could just be other objects mistaken for drones. To really see an object clearly such as a consumer drone like a DJI Phantom you’ll have to be very close and at that range it’s going to zip by extremely fast.
- bb88 8y ago
  The sun sets in NJ at 5:03 pm tonight, and backtracking through the article, the disruption started around 5:30, probably reported just a few minutes before ATC redirected traffic. Likely they saw the lights of the drone flying around. It's a clear sky tonight, so they would have been able to see the drone for several miles.
  - bronco21016 8y ago
    It’s hard enough to pick out the lights of an aircraft 5 nm away in the sea of lights surrounding the NYC metro area. I highly doubt they were able to identify a drone by its lights from up to ‘several miles’ away. Let’s assume they did though. All of the drones I’ve owned have red and green lights. Aircraft typically have red and green lights in addition to white lights facing aft and typically a red beacon and strobes. What’s so different about these lights that they’re able to distinguish them as those of a drone? Isn’t it possible it was a helicopter? A GA aircraft flying VFR? What about the red, green, white lights from a boat? In my experience there have been many times I’ve seen something strange in the sky where my mind wants me to think it was something but in the end I really cannot be sure what it was. There’s been multiple times something has gone whizzing by at cruise or in the terminal area and for all I know it could have been a bird, a drone, a balloon, a kite, etc. Given the report was at night and it’s at an altitude that a drone shouldn’t normally be operating it seems questionable to me whether what they saw was actually a drone. With the recent media attention drones have had around airports I suspect there will be an uptick in reported sightings that likely are not drones at all.
- beezischillin 8y ago
  DJI drones have software features to prevent abuse: https://www.dji.com/flysafe https://www.dji.com/flysafe If these are indeed drones causing disruption then they might not be off-the shelf video drones.
FPGAhacker 8y ago
Instead of trying to take out the drone, someone should take inspiration from that story [1] about lidar ruining some cameras (but not eyeballs) and start targeting the drone cameras. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18886283 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18886283
twblalock 8y ago
It seems like this is a cheap and easy way to cause a whole lot of disruption. We're going to see more and more of this. At some point Congress or some state legislature is going to pass restrictive legislation regulating drone ownership and use much more strictly than is the case today. It might require manufacturers to include backdoors to enable law enforcement to take control of a drone. It will be portrayed as a safety measure, perhaps even as an antiterrorism measure. This is why we can't have nice things.
- KingMachiavelli 8y ago
  You could almost replace "drone" with "gun" in your comment and save for the "take control of a gun" line, it would still make sense. You could get an air port to shutdown by shooting a gun yet the consequnces of doing so are severe enough that it is in ineffective means of causing disrucption. The key difference is that a drone can go places a person with a gun cannot so I suspect that methods of finding drone operators will improve and become more widely deployed.
  - azinman2 8y ago
    Not to mention that you can reconstruct where a bullet was shot from, but a drone could be operated from anywhere. Bullets are also loud when they go off, so localization becomes easier.
    - toufiqbarhamov 8y ago
      We’ve been living with guns for centuries, we’ve been living with drones for decades, and only the last decade saw them in the hands of many people. I suspect the current “Wild West” of drones is a temporary phenomenon.
- fucking_tragedy 8y ago
  > It seems like this is a cheap and easy way to cause a whole lot of disruption. We're going to see more and more of this. Pretty sure there are consequences for violating FAA regulations, so I doubt there will be a lot of intentional aircraft disruption by drone operators.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
aaron695 8y ago
Christ this "Fake News" is still blabbing on.... Now only one smaller media outlet is questioning it, when it should have been a obvious question from time dot. “Two drones at once. In the dark. At 3500 feet altitude,” wrote Brendan Schulman , the vice-president of policy and legal affairs at DJI, which makes flying and camera stabilization systems. “It’s very cold outside, below freezing; not the kind of weather for flying drones. This is just not credible.” https://twitter.com/dronelaws/status/1087864682898227200 https://twitter.com/dronelaws/status/1087864682898227200

49 points by jbegley 8y ago

I understand approaching this with an abundance of caution, but the drones were reportedly 17 miles away near a different airport, so this looks like quite an overreaction.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
vkou 8y ago
Unless you have an incredibly deep understanding of air traffic control protocols, I don't think you can make this judgement. Consider that drones may not show up on radar, restricted air space around airports can change at a moment's notice, they cannot be avoided through visual identification, airplanes need a long distance to drop/gain altitude when landing/taking off, airplanes need vertical buffer when sharing airspace with other airplanes, and that much aerial maneuvering and control happens at the speed of humans talking in technical jargon to other humans. Even if no planned flight needs the airspace, the drone may be in buffer airspace that would be used for emergency complications. The drone pilot was grossly irresponsible to fly where they did, and should be in jail.
- trhway 8y ago
  Did he violate any specific rules?
  - vkou 8y ago
    Yes, he violated the specific rule that limits drone activity to below 400 feet. It was flying at 3,500 feet. The operator is either dangerously ignorant, or reckless.
    - trhway 8y ago
      well, while it is a violation, i think they paid so much attention to it because the Teterboro is in the direction of the main runway at EWR. Anyway, looks like an airspace full of fun: http://vfrmap.com/?type=vfrc&lat=40.692&lon=-74.169&zoom=10 http://vfrmap.com/?type=vfrc&lat=40.692&lon=-74.169&zoom=10
  - rixrax 8y ago
    In case this would have been drone flight falling under 14CFR part 107, at least these come to mind. - 107.41: over Tererboro airport and did not appear to have contacted ATC (air traffic control) and/or obtained waiver to operate in class B-E airspace - 107.51: They flew above 400 feet - 107.31: did not maintain VLOS with their drone (Visual Line of Sight) - 107.43: interfered with operation of airport - 107.39: possibly flew UAS over people - 107.51: possibly within 500 feet vertically or 2000 feet horizontally from clouds - 107.37: possibly (b) No person may operate a small unmanned aircraft so close to another aircraft as to create a collision hazard Under CFR 14 part 107 you could request an waiver from FAA for a specific mission to fly above 400ft or outside VLOS or within different class airspace’s etc. 107.21 states also: In an in-flight emergency requiring immediate action, the remote pilot in command may deviate from any rule of this part to the extent necessary to meet that emergency. I suspect they had not. Summary of FAApart 107: https://www.faa.gov/uas/media/Part_107_Summary.pdf https://www.faa.gov/uas/media/Part_107_Summary.pdf Note: in the us you can also fly under section 336 (model aircrafts) or under section 333 (pilot licensed remote pilots). But without checking the rules, I think differences would be minimal (e.g. ability obtain waivers, technicalities for ops near airports - e.g. 5 mile rule instead of airspace considerations).
nomel 8y ago
For a different perspective, 17 miles is only 5 minutes for a 747 at comfortable landing speed. At normal approach speed, this is much less.
- bdash 8y ago
  What's more, the two airports are 17 miles apart only if you look at driving distance. It's more like 12 miles as the crow (or an airplane) flies.
badwolf 8y ago
I think the key phrase from the article was "The drone was spotted about 3,500 feet over Teterboro Airport" Drone flying at 3500 feet definitely seems like it could pose a risk to flights out of Liberty 17 miles away
- rootusrootus 8y ago
  n/a
  - cmurf 8y ago
    Ok so you have a pilot certification? Or you have any sort of aviation experience, including air traffic control? Have you ever looked at any aeronautical charts for the area under discussion? Because you're asserting that people who do have aviation experience, did the wrong thing and overreacted. What is your basis? Is this some kind of Dunning Kruger effect? Disclaimer: I am a certified pilot, and a former instrument flight instructor, with a decently tuned bullshit meter that's currently pegged.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - dvtrn 8y ago
    Isn't that still WELL above what you're legally allowed to fly a drone even with a 107?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
bmurphy1976 8y ago
3500 feet is 3100 feet higher than drone regulations allow. That's the real problem here. If that was in the direct flight path of an airport even 17 miles away this is wildly reckless behavior.
- blacksmith_tb 8y ago
  Hanlon's razor suggests to me it could be a flyaway (which of course doesn't make it less dangerous to aircraft, just not intentionally reckless).
  - bmurphy1976 8y ago
    I don't think so. Most fly aways in my experience are horizontal not vertical. A quick check of YouTube will show plenty of reckless behavior and my small drone is more than capable of flying at a distance of 3500 feet away from me. Hanlons razor says this was somebody trying to get that sweet picture or see how far they can push their toy.
    - dvtrn 8y ago
      Or wind caught it at a higher altitude. As wind is prone to do.
    - cmurf 8y ago
      Yeah. Sometimes people like to use laser pointers at helicopters and planes. It carries up to five years in prison, and they do get caught, prosecuted and the feds do aggressively pursue maximum prison sentences, whether a pilot is blinded by it or not. And I put letting your toy fly into terminal area airspace in the same category. I don't care if it's intentional or accident. Control your shit, or go to prison.
cmurf 8y ago
This is the VFR Terminal Area chart for the airports in question, Teterboro is due north of EWR, http://vfrmap.com/?type=vfrc&lat=40.692&lon=-74.169&zoom=10 http://vfrmap.com/?type=vfrc&lat=40.692&lon=-74.169&zoom=10 and an object near TEB at 3500' is inside the Class B airspace which requires positive control (not merely radar contact, not merely radio contact, but you must have a clearance or you cannot enter class B). TEB is also within 12 miles of EWR, and that's inside the departure/arrival path for EWR's main north south runways. Aircraft inside class B have a guarantee of positive separation by ATC. Everyone has to follow very specific rules in that airspace. And any aircraft that is not under positive control is a threat to all other aircraft. Anyway, it is definitely not an overreaction. Also with the government shutdown, I expect there's next to no one available from FAA or NTSB to do a thorough investigation, most inspectors are not categorized as essential.
AWildC182 8y ago
Anecdote: I was flying during instrument training at night and took a laser strike from a small town about 30nm north of a class bravo airport (very large airline hub). When I reported it to approach, they basically closed all the northbound arrival/departure routes and started diverting traffic to the east and west so nobody would overfly the offender. Also, I got to watch a LOT of cop cars light up a minute or two later...
- c3534l 8y ago
  Pardon my ignorance, but what's a laser strike?
  - BoorishBears 8y ago
    An attempt to blind aviators with a laser pointer
    - spydum 8y ago
      I’ve never understood this - aiming a laser at a vessel moving at over a hundred miles an hour many thousands of feet away seems incredibly harmless, unless you have one gigantic, powerful laser...
      - thaumaturgy 8y ago
        When the laser hits the cockpit glass, the whole panel lights up. Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VshPGuKoa2Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VshPGuKoa2Q
        AWildC182 8y ago
        That's probably the mildest case I've seen. When it happened to me the guy was about half the distance and it lit up the whole cockpit.
      - sokoloff 8y ago
        I've been hit twice by a ground-based laser. Both times the flashes were bright enough to be disruptive to my adaption to night vision and IMO reduced safety of flight temporarily. I called both into ATC. On one instance, I had the time to hang around and report the location quite accurately and saw the beginning of ground response of police (probably 15+ minutes, though). I wasn't able to stick around and learn the outcome. An EMS helicopter was lased a few months ago resulting in (I think temporary) injury to the crew and a delayed response to an EMS transport mission.
bdash 8y ago
The drone was reported over Teterboro at around 3,500ft. One of the ILS approaches into Newark[1] has Teterboro as an initial fix, with a minimum crossing altitude of 3,000ft. That puts the drone exactly where aircraft inbound on that approach will be. [1]: https://aeronav.faa.gov/d-tpp/1901/00285IL22L.PDF https://aeronav.faa.gov/d-tpp/1901/00285IL22L.PDF

stevespang 8y ago

Russian sleeper cells armed with dozens of DJI drones and diplomatic passports so all the police can do is deport them if caught . . .

everdev 8y ago

FYI, here's a video of a drone striking an airplane wing in a test environment: https://youtube.com/watch?v=QH0V7kp-xg0 https://youtube.com/watch?v=QH0V7kp-xg0

becauseSpecial 8y ago
The main idea not highlighted by this video: Aviation fuel tanks are frequently held in the wings, and a drone’s charged lithium batteries, when deformed, will arc, burn violently and often explode.
asdfasgasdgasdg 8y ago
Can any air people comment on whether that collision would have been fatal to the aircraft? I'm sure it possibly could be, but at what likelihood? Personally I'd be more concerned about a propeller or wind screen strike, but these guys know more about it than me. There's just no good reason to be flying near an airport. On the other hand, if you're five miles away from the nearest airport, the odds of a collision (even if you break the rules r.e. flying in LOS or under a certain ceiling) are just astronomically low. The sky is an enormous place and the odds of two things occupying the same space in it without trying to are once in a century if that. At the current level of density, at any rate. Another thing that strikes me, and probably won't make me popular with pilots on this board: dozens or hundreds of GA pilots get themselves killed every year. Most of the time, this is due to pilot error. Drones represent some amount of increased risk to GA pilots. But, at the current level of drone market penetration, it seems empirically tiny compared to the risks GA pilots already faced voluntarily. I don't know what to do with this observation, except perhaps downgrade my personal concerns about the risks of drone <-> plane incidents.
- everdev 8y ago
  > The sky is an enormous place and the odds of two things occupying the same space in it without trying to are once in a century if that. Not near an airport. Planes takeoff and land in extremely predictable patterns. And at about the same height as drones typically operate. I think you're thinking of a meteorite hitting an airplane, which yes is probably extremely rare.

the8472 8y ago

The drone did not halt the flights. Administrators halted the flight out of fears over a drone. What I wonder is whether those fears are proportionate. Are drones any worse than a flock of birds? Edit: video from a sibling comment suggests the answer is "yes" for the case of a collision with a wings's leading edge.

orev 8y ago
> Are drones any worse than a flock of birds? Yes. A flock of birds has incentive and the means to get out of the way. Drones don't react to their surroundings. Drones are also hard and do more damage than a bird strike.
- danepowell 8y ago
  I'm skeptical that birds have a means to dodge something moving at hundreds of miles per hour. If anything, a human controlling a drone from a distance has more perspective / ability to dodge a plane than a bird does. Now whether we should actually trust said human to do so... that's a different question, as is the potential damage vs birdstrike.
  - AWildC182 8y ago
    I've nearly hit birds flying (and actually hit one but at night). They're actually not bad at avoiding aircraft going 100+ mph. They'll tuck their wings and dive if they feel they're in danger so typical training is to pull to avoid a strike (and lower the chance it impacts the windscreen). Obviously not all birds are great at this, particularly the larger ones but they do seek to avoid aircraft generally.
dmitrygr 8y ago
Why does this keep being asked? YES! drones are a lot more damaging than birds: http://aviationweek.com/bca/faa-study-drones-more-dangerous-birds http://aviationweek.com/bca/faa-study-drones-more-dangerous-... actual report: http://www.assureuas.org/projects/deliverables/sUASAirborneCollisionReport.php http://www.assureuas.org/projects/deliverables/sUASAirborneC...

aaron695 8y ago

Do we really think a pilot traveling at X speed can see a drone at 3,500 feet? Lol, do we really believe this? How dumb are we? Here's a call - the "two" pilots will not have report it independently the second will have heard about the first alleged "sighting". When did common sense become such a rare commodity. Yes, it's always been this way, probably significantly better post internet, but it'd be nice for crazy stuff like this to be shut down sooner.

bronco21016 8y ago

I’m not sure how we could ever gather statistics but I’m really curious if reported drone sightings could just be other objects mistaken for drones. To really see an object clearly such as a consumer drone like a DJI Phantom you’ll have to be very close and at that range it’s going to zip by extremely fast.

bb88 8y ago
The sun sets in NJ at 5:03 pm tonight, and backtracking through the article, the disruption started around 5:30, probably reported just a few minutes before ATC redirected traffic. Likely they saw the lights of the drone flying around. It's a clear sky tonight, so they would have been able to see the drone for several miles.
- bronco21016 8y ago
  It’s hard enough to pick out the lights of an aircraft 5 nm away in the sea of lights surrounding the NYC metro area. I highly doubt they were able to identify a drone by its lights from up to ‘several miles’ away. Let’s assume they did though. All of the drones I’ve owned have red and green lights. Aircraft typically have red and green lights in addition to white lights facing aft and typically a red beacon and strobes. What’s so different about these lights that they’re able to distinguish them as those of a drone? Isn’t it possible it was a helicopter? A GA aircraft flying VFR? What about the red, green, white lights from a boat? In my experience there have been many times I’ve seen something strange in the sky where my mind wants me to think it was something but in the end I really cannot be sure what it was. There’s been multiple times something has gone whizzing by at cruise or in the terminal area and for all I know it could have been a bird, a drone, a balloon, a kite, etc. Given the report was at night and it’s at an altitude that a drone shouldn’t normally be operating it seems questionable to me whether what they saw was actually a drone. With the recent media attention drones have had around airports I suspect there will be an uptick in reported sightings that likely are not drones at all.
beezischillin 8y ago
DJI drones have software features to prevent abuse: https://www.dji.com/flysafe https://www.dji.com/flysafe If these are indeed drones causing disruption then they might not be off-the shelf video drones.

FPGAhacker 8y ago

Instead of trying to take out the drone, someone should take inspiration from that story [1] about lidar ruining some cameras (but not eyeballs) and start targeting the drone cameras. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18886283 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18886283

twblalock 8y ago

It seems like this is a cheap and easy way to cause a whole lot of disruption. We're going to see more and more of this. At some point Congress or some state legislature is going to pass restrictive legislation regulating drone ownership and use much more strictly than is the case today. It might require manufacturers to include backdoors to enable law enforcement to take control of a drone. It will be portrayed as a safety measure, perhaps even as an antiterrorism measure. This is why we can't have nice things.

KingMachiavelli 8y ago
You could almost replace "drone" with "gun" in your comment and save for the "take control of a gun" line, it would still make sense. You could get an air port to shutdown by shooting a gun yet the consequnces of doing so are severe enough that it is in ineffective means of causing disrucption. The key difference is that a drone can go places a person with a gun cannot so I suspect that methods of finding drone operators will improve and become more widely deployed.
- azinman2 8y ago
  Not to mention that you can reconstruct where a bullet was shot from, but a drone could be operated from anywhere. Bullets are also loud when they go off, so localization becomes easier.
  - toufiqbarhamov 8y ago
    We’ve been living with guns for centuries, we’ve been living with drones for decades, and only the last decade saw them in the hands of many people. I suspect the current “Wild West” of drones is a temporary phenomenon.
fucking_tragedy 8y ago
> It seems like this is a cheap and easy way to cause a whole lot of disruption. We're going to see more and more of this. Pretty sure there are consequences for violating FAA regulations, so I doubt there will be a lot of intentional aircraft disruption by drone operators.

deleted 8y ago

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aaron695 8y ago

Christ this "Fake News" is still blabbing on.... Now only one smaller media outlet is questioning it, when it should have been a obvious question from time dot. “Two drones at once. In the dark. At 3500 feet altitude,” wrote Brendan Schulman , the vice-president of policy and legal affairs at DJI, which makes flying and camera stabilization systems. “It’s very cold outside, below freezing; not the kind of weather for flying drones. This is just not credible.” https://twitter.com/dronelaws/status/1087864682898227200 https://twitter.com/dronelaws/status/1087864682898227200