4 ms·

If the goal is simply to disrupt air travel, why not just call in a bomb threat?

• frereubu 7y ago
  That would likely lead to a much more serious criminal charge because it's more closely related to terrorism. People who are arrested for making jokes about having a bomb in their suitcase when going through customs at an airport find out very quickly how seriously those kinds of things are taken, particularly in a country with a relatively recent history of terrorist bombings and a high state of alert for terrorist activity.
  • gok 7y ago
    So they're just taking advantage of the current legal loophole that bombs and drones are treated differently, despite the fact that they can be similarly dangerous to airplanes?
    • frereubu 7y ago
      You're being obtuse. The aim of a bomb is to destroy lives and property. The aim of this protest is to stop planes flying, and to do so by flagging what they're going to do weeks in advance. Just the fact that they're talking about a mass of drones might be enough to close Heathrow for the day. The fuss about the recent drone-that-wasn't shows that you may not even need to fly them for this to have an effect, and if they do they're going to be damn well sure that they're nowhere near flight paths.
      • gok 7y ago
        I said "bomb threat", not bomb. A false bomb threat is a way to disrupt and annoy an adversary. Like a mass droning.
      • dang 7y ago
        > You're being obtuse. Please edit personal swipes out of your comments here. Your comment would be just fine and much better without that bit. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
        • frereubu 7y ago
          Fair point, perhaps that wasn't well put, although I can't edit it now. However, I did get the feeling that the previous commenter wasn't really arguing in good faith. So perhaps "it feels like you're being deliberately obtuse" might have been better.
• teachrdan 7y ago
  Because they're not terrorists. Terrorists use violence (and credible threats of violence) against civilians to achieve political ends. Instead, the activists here are disrupting air traffic using nonviolent means.
  • gok 7y ago
    They are most certainly terrorists. How is "I'm going to blow up an airplane unless you don't fly it" different from "I'm going to fly a robot into an airplane, potentially causing loss of life unless you don't fly it"? How about "I'm going to aim blinding lasers at pilot flying a plane unless you don't fly the plane?"
    • detaro 7y ago
      Except they are not threatening to fly a drone into a plane.
      • gok 7y ago
        So if LHR decides to let airplanes fly anyway, they'll stop flying the drones?
        • detaro 7y ago
          Or continue flying them in places where it's forbidden, but planes don't go. Which is not 100% without risk and would leave little time to react if they'd leave them (which is why flying there is forbidden), but very far from "intentionally flying a drone into a plane".
          • AnimalMuppet 7y ago
            In particular, I strongly suspect that Heathrow has zones which, while not directly in the flight path, are still "too close" and will therefore cause them to stop operating airplanes. As you say, that's not 100% without risk. It's an erosion of the safety margin, and safety margins are there for a reason.