Interesting reading in this thread, with the opposing views. Here is my take...
I'm a pilot, I fly for a well known British airline where I regularly transport hundreds of people around Europe. I have one job to do, and that is to get them there safely, preferably on time, but always safely. We spend hours and hours going through different scenarios in simulators, practicing for as many eventualities as we can to ensure when things do go wrong, people get to go home that evening. However, drones are not a regular occurrence and are nearly impossible to predict. Are they a problem? Absolutely! It's very well accepted within our industry that a drone strike is not a "what if", more of a "when".
Let me get one fact out there before, I'm very pro-drone. I used to fly RC aircraft and helicopters as a serious hobby, drones are a natural evolution of that hobby and it's great to see people picking up anything that flies. I don't personally own a drone and would not spend thousands on a camera carrying done (I'm lucky enough to get these views as part of my job), but I do often fly around with my friends FPV racing drones and have a great time doing so.
The problem is multifaceted. There is the immediate threat, which is of course impact. Would a drone damage an aircraft? Well I'd say yes. A small drone wouldn't do much, but when you start approaching the size or weight of a DJI Phantom, then you will have problems. Let's put it this way, worst case scenario; a Phantom weighs 1.2kg or so is flying around at 3000ft on departure over a busy city, I've been cleared for high speed and am flying at 280kts with a nice 20kt tailwind. This works out to be around 360mph over the ground. Imagine the energy involved in this impact of my plane and this Phantom. Would it damage the windscreen, most likely, potentially hitting the crew. Would it take out an engine? Almost certainly. Could it damage the slat/flaps requiring you to land in a high-risk zero flap situation, again most likely. Is this an acceptable risk with so many lives on board? Absolutely not. In all situations the plane can and would safely fly, but it's just not an acceptable situation to put lives like this at risk. Remember the drone itself may not cause an indecent beyond the impact, but at low altitudes these are critical stages of flight, it wouldn't take a lot to turn this small(ish) issue in to a very big one.
You may then go and say, "don't you deal with this with birds?". To this I say absolutely! All of these threat are apparent with birds, but they are so much more easy to predict. Seasons, environmental conditions, geographic locations, they are considerably easier to predict. When they do arrive, you get pilot reports, airport operations will go attempt to scare them away, there are protocols in place for when birds are around. Birds are not stupid either, they know that airports and airplanes are pretty scary things, so they tend to keep their distance. Of course small birds like a robin are very little threat to us, they hit any part of the plane they'll just be vaporised (sorry bird lovers
), if they go through the engine they won't cause any problem. The larger the bird, the larger the threat. Add in to this flocking birds then you can have problems, a flock of migrating swans is a serious issue...
The problem is that anybody can just go get a drone, charge it up, then go fly it. There is no predictability in the nature or timing of drone operation. I get it too, the views from 10,000ft are seriously good, why wouldn't you want to see it? With nobody telling you to not do so, then what's stopping you?
In my opinion the solution is not to ban them, or to require registration. If I were to fly past a drone on approach, I'm hardly going to be able to spot the type of drone far less the registration to report it. No, in my opinion drones above a certain weight (I do not know what weight this will be, it would have to be tested) should have built in geo fencing, it shouldn't even take off near an airport or in restricted areas. Altitude caps which vary according to the skies above. This data is easily available and could be built into the software. When new data is out the drone should be unable to power up until it is updated. With this then you could assure the safety of the skies and you can enjoy your drone and make sure everyone is is free from drone related risk.
From a different aspect, the commercial costs for things like yesterday can run into the millions. I am obviously not going to share figures but a friend was caught up in the Gatwick issues the other day and a quick tot up put a single flight well into the multiple 6 figure sum for costs to the airline. Times this by the amount of aircraft and you get big money! Who's going to pay for this? The drone operator, no chance. I doubt they'd have to pay for a new $10M engine either when they get their footage of it being ingested.
It's great to see "drone code" posters near drones in some stores (though very few), but people don't read them, they don't care. The risk should be taken out of the hands of the operator and be built into the devices themselves. It's great to see people like DJI doing this already, it should be made standard.
Lets put it this way, I for one hope I never hit a drone, I don't want to have to deal with such unnecessary dangers at work for someones youtube moment...
