5 ms·

I know a lot of people are viewing this as the police getting their comeuppance, but there's not really enough info in this article to go on. The last line of t

by joemi 5y ago

I know a lot of people are viewing this as the police getting their comeuppance, but there's not really enough info in this article to go on. The last line of the article is pretty explicit about this: "The cause of the collision is not known."

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
minitoar 5y ago
The only thing I could imagine that would exonerate the operators of the drone would be if it turned out this was an unforseeable equipment failure (eg an uncommanded climb into controlled airspace), and they weren’t already being excessively risky at the time of failure.
- bigiain 5y ago
  Less than a mile out and directly in line with the landing approach off an active runway? Having the drone powered up at all was "being excessively risky" in my opinion. I have a DJI drone that will not power up at my house, I'm about 3km out and 7-800m to the side of the runway centreline of my nearby airport. I've been known to test fly and pid tune small (sub 150g) drones in my backyard at lower-than-tree-height or about 3-4 meters up max, but even that "feels wrong" to me if there's a plane I can see on approach or on FlightRadar, so I'll land and wait for a gap.
caconym_ 5y ago
You don't need to know much more than that the manned aircraft was on final approach within a mile of the airport^[1] and that the police drone got in its way. Short of some one-in-a-million (but probably actually a lot more than a million) malfunction, there is very little wiggle room here for the police operators to have been anything but profoundly and (one would assume, by "civilian" standards at least) criminally negligent. You simply do not fly drones anywhere near an airport without coordinating with the relevant air traffic control authorities, and this is exactly why. The people in the 172 could have been killed. Every person operating a UAS needs to be positive they aren't doing so in restricted or conflicted airspace, even casual hobbyists flying tiny sub-250g drones. Equipment failure is usually not an excuse (for the operator) either, since the limits and failsafes on the drone should always be set to prevent it from ending up somewhere it shouldn't be. Every time I'm going to fly one of my drones, I evaluate these settings and choose new values tailored to the situation and "mission". This includes disabling automatic return-to-home if there is any chance of that function causing it to fly a dangerous route, e.g. one over people. ^[1] https://www.avweb.com/aviation-news/172-substantially-damaged-by-police-drone/ https://www.avweb.com/aviation-news/172-substantially-damage...
- joemi 5y ago
  You proved my point by bringing a second (more detailed) source into your argument. At the time I commented, there was no second source in any of the HN comments here.
  - caconym_ 5y ago
    The "about to land" and "at Toronto Buttonville Municipal Airport" verbiage in OP's article is plenty damning, as it tells us that the police drone's operator(s) not only failed in their general duty to stay clear of and yield to manned aircraft, but did so in the vicinity of an active airport. My point (possibly not well made) was that "the cause of the collision is not known" is mostly irrelevant wrt. the culpability of the police, as in any incident like this there is a tiny keyhole of possible extenuating circumstances surrounded by an ocean of likely negligence. I brought in the other source to verify the claims in OP's article, but the fact that the manned aircraft was literally on short final makes this incident even worse than the first article implies. It escalates the police misconduct from serious, likely criminal (by "civilian" standards, at least) negligence to something so absurdly over the top that I'm not sure what to call it. There is no more dangerous place to operate a UAS than in the glide slope of an active runway. The term "reckless endangerment" comes to mind.
    - joemi 5y ago
      I don't dispute that (now that we know more) the situation is pretty damning. But again, the original article (a local news article written by a "web content writer") was so light on facts and so short in general that there easily _could_ have been plenty that would have changed the situation when more info came from another source. The "about to land" phrase that you specifically point out really isn't all that specific. People say they're "about to" do something all the time when they're not actually very close to doing it. I don't know much about CTVNews specifically, but I hope we can both agree that especially in this day and age it's not uncommon for news organizations to use language in such a way to make an event seem more dramatic than it actually was, so I stand by my original statement that there wasn't enough info in that article to go on.

by joemi 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

minitoar 5y ago

The only thing I could imagine that would exonerate the operators of the drone would be if it turned out this was an unforseeable equipment failure (eg an uncommanded climb into controlled airspace), and they weren’t already being excessively risky at the time of failure.

bigiain 5y ago
Less than a mile out and directly in line with the landing approach off an active runway? Having the drone powered up at all was "being excessively risky" in my opinion. I have a DJI drone that will not power up at my house, I'm about 3km out and 7-800m to the side of the runway centreline of my nearby airport. I've been known to test fly and pid tune small (sub 150g) drones in my backyard at lower-than-tree-height or about 3-4 meters up max, but even that "feels wrong" to me if there's a plane I can see on approach or on FlightRadar, so I'll land and wait for a gap.

caconym_ 5y ago

You don't need to know much more than that the manned aircraft was on final approach within a mile of the airport^[1] and that the police drone got in its way. Short of some one-in-a-million (but probably actually a lot more than a million) malfunction, there is very little wiggle room here for the police operators to have been anything but profoundly and (one would assume, by "civilian" standards at least) criminally negligent. You simply do not fly drones anywhere near an airport without coordinating with the relevant air traffic control authorities, and this is exactly why. The people in the 172 could have been killed. Every person operating a UAS needs to be positive they aren't doing so in restricted or conflicted airspace, even casual hobbyists flying tiny sub-250g drones. Equipment failure is usually not an excuse (for the operator) either, since the limits and failsafes on the drone should always be set to prevent it from ending up somewhere it shouldn't be. Every time I'm going to fly one of my drones, I evaluate these settings and choose new values tailored to the situation and "mission". This includes disabling automatic return-to-home if there is any chance of that function causing it to fly a dangerous route, e.g. one over people. ^[1] https://www.avweb.com/aviation-news/172-substantially-damaged-by-police-drone/ https://www.avweb.com/aviation-news/172-substantially-damage...

joemi 5y ago
You proved my point by bringing a second (more detailed) source into your argument. At the time I commented, there was no second source in any of the HN comments here.
- caconym_ 5y ago
  The "about to land" and "at Toronto Buttonville Municipal Airport" verbiage in OP's article is plenty damning, as it tells us that the police drone's operator(s) not only failed in their general duty to stay clear of and yield to manned aircraft, but did so in the vicinity of an active airport. My point (possibly not well made) was that "the cause of the collision is not known" is mostly irrelevant wrt. the culpability of the police, as in any incident like this there is a tiny keyhole of possible extenuating circumstances surrounded by an ocean of likely negligence. I brought in the other source to verify the claims in OP's article, but the fact that the manned aircraft was literally on short final makes this incident even worse than the first article implies. It escalates the police misconduct from serious, likely criminal (by "civilian" standards, at least) negligence to something so absurdly over the top that I'm not sure what to call it. There is no more dangerous place to operate a UAS than in the glide slope of an active runway. The term "reckless endangerment" comes to mind.
  - joemi 5y ago
    I don't dispute that (now that we know more) the situation is pretty damning. But again, the original article (a local news article written by a "web content writer") was so light on facts and so short in general that there easily _could_ have been plenty that would have changed the situation when more info came from another source. The "about to land" phrase that you specifically point out really isn't all that specific. People say they're "about to" do something all the time when they're not actually very close to doing it. I don't know much about CTVNews specifically, but I hope we can both agree that especially in this day and age it's not uncommon for news organizations to use language in such a way to make an event seem more dramatic than it actually was, so I stand by my original statement that there wasn't enough info in that article to go on.