Drone hits passenger jet

I guess the problem is that people close to an airport are more likely to like flying things. But they should also understand that flying near an airport is a **** idea.

Saying that I am surprised that they never got picked up by FOD radar but then again we don't know how close it was to the runway.
 
LOL @ the people saying the aeroplane engine will chew the drone up no problem.

Let's put this into perspective:

A power station turbine spins at 3600 rpm. Wet steam is enough to wreck the titanium blades on these rotor stators and cause violent destruction!

A Rolls Royce RB211-22B engine on a Boeing 747 rotates at about 3800 RPM. If wet steam is enough to wreck a power station rotor stator, what do you think a metal drone will do to the Boeing engine?
 
Ricochet J said:
LOL @ the people saying the aeroplane engine will chew the drone up no problem.

Let's put this into perspective:

A power station turbine spins at 3600 rpm. Wet steam is enough to wreck the titanium blades on these rotor stators and cause violent destruction!

A Rolls Royce RB211-22B engine on a Boeing 747 rotates at about 3800 RPM. If wet steam is enough to wreck a power station rotor stator, what do you think a metal drone will do to the Boeing engine?
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Arent you missing a zero on the jet engine?

Further perspective on speed and damage read up on space debris, even a peice of sand can be devastating if its going fast enough.
 
Completely irresponsible if true but...

"A police investigation is under way after a passenger plane approaching Heathrow Airport was hit by what is believed to have been a drone."

No confirmation on what it was yet?

You'll never be able to stop people flying them near air ports. Yes, you could geo-fence but only branded, RTF models will work. You'll not get a GPS module on a 250 racing quad for example.

Jamming them isn't a great idea either. Not all transmitters/receivers have decent failsafes so if they lose signal they can just randomly fly off rather than falling to the ground.

I'm all for registration but if you're the type of pond scum who flys near airports then you're not likely to register yours anyway.

The thing that'll help the most is finding a couple of idiots who are breaking the rules and jailing them for a decent length of time. Trawl YouTube too - there's hundreds of videos of people flying over roads, round housing estates etc - all of which are illegal. That should put most of the others off of flouting the law.

I know that once I've finished building my new quad that I can't go to certain areas I'd like to around where I live as it'd be withing a couple of miles of East Midlands but those are the rules so I'll just go to the other 90% of the countryside that doesn't have a no fly zone over it.
 
Rilot said:
They are not going to ban them. Too many media companies (BBC included) use UAVs for all of their aerial shots these days.
Also, when I've got a drone in the air, I've got far too many things to photograph that are way more interesting than people.
You want to ban cameras on phones too because they might invade your privacy too?
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Plus OCUK sell them LoL!
Also "A plane approaching Heathrow Airport is believed to have hit a drone before it landed safely, the Metropolitan Police has said.".
Andi.
 
Jet engines are pretty good at taking hits and keep on running, their simplicity helps with this. Main reason they're so successful! But a strike from a metal object at speed could very easily disable it and cause all sorts of other issues (as if having one less engine wasn't enough).

This is probably some little chav thinking he's funny, hopefully the police can find them and make an example out of them.
Not really sure what you could do about someone using them hoping to actually take a plane down? I guess was never really an issue before as RC copters and planes took a fair bit of practice to use. These drones your grandmother could fly with their ability to stabilise.
I guess could require a license for the bigger ones although probably nothing to stop someone building their own out of parts.

Issue is only at the back and front of runways as planes very quickly will be out of reach of a drone, is it possible to jam them by broadcasting in those areas in such a way it wouldn't affect the planes themselves flying through it?!
 
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Freakbro said:
The Dutch were training Eagles to do this iirc and the Met were looking at the possibility

Just had to check the story wasn't released on April 1st :p

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-35519470

Seems a bit of a strange solution to me, but hey
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Well, these animals exist, are pretty capable of the task, seems good to me. The added bonus is that as drones get larger, we'll have to breed larger eagles to keep up. I would love to see eagles with 14' wingspans swooping over British cities. :D
 
For Eagles to work, you have to know the drone is there in the first place. Otherwise you're just putting huge birds up into the air patrolling where aircraft are flying.

The answer has to be stopping people doing stupid things in the first place, rather than finding a way to take the drones out of the sky. If people arent going to do that out of common sense, then maybe the idea of serious jail time deterrent isn't so bad. Sucks for the scapegoats, but that's just the society we live in.
 
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