Yesterday, we had this article on YC [1], from some economist at the anti-regulation Mercatus Institute, claiming that a drone strike was very, very unlikely. That guy assumed that drones are distributed randomly across airspace. In practice, they tend to be near where people live, which means cities and airports. I posted the FAA's list of drone sightings near LAX yesterday. Today, this.
The pilot of the aircraft, a Lufthansa A380-800, reported seeing the drone above him. The reported near miss distance of 200 feet is very close for an aircraft with a 260 foot wingspan and a tail tip 60 feet above the pilot.
WTF is someone doing flying a drone at 5000 feet over downtown LA in the LAX approach path? That drone operator needs to be found and arrested.
> WTF is someone doing flying a drone at 5000 feet over downtown LA in the LAX approach path? That drone operator needs to be found and arrested.
Los Angeles has already effectively criminalized flying drones in most of the city. In October 2015 the city passed an ordinance that requires drone pilots to get "express authorization" from all airports within 5 miles[1]. This was done despite the fact that it is stricter than the FAA's requirement/advice for drone pilots to "notify" all airports within 5 miles[2] (Two months later, in December 2015, the FAA published a fact sheet trying to discourage local drone regulations that could result in a patchwork of confusing laws around the country[3].)
In January 2016, LA charged two drone pilots under the new ordinance for flying drones within 5 miles of _heliports_[4], indicating that they considered heliports to be equivalent to airports. The pilots are facing misdemeanor charges that could result in a fine and up to 6 months in jail.
The thing about heliports in LA is that they're everywhere! Probably 80-90% of LA is within 5 miles of a heliport. And not just one--if you wanted to fly your drone in the field next to the Silver Lake Reservoir, you'd probably have to get authorization from 7 or 8 heliports. It is, effectively, a ban.
The FAA will sometimes let you fly a drone in controlled airspace if you get a transponder (yes, there are tiny ones for drones) and ask for a clearance. Now you're in the airspace system, visible to everybody else, and in contact with air traffic control. That's the right way to do it if you're making a movie, reporting news, or just getting pictures of real estate.
I could be remembering wrong, but I believe the last time I checked, the FAA required people operating RC planes/quadcopters to maintain a physical line of sight to their machine, with the implication being you need to do so to remain in control of the machine. A quadcopter a mile away is definitely outside controllable line of sight, and this guy should be getting questioned by the FAA.
So here is a more interesting question. If the drone was actually 200' away from the Airbus A380 then it would have been un-flyable in the jet wash / vortices once the plane passed. There is a pretty good chance that the drone would be ripped apart by those forces. But we don't have a companion drone debris story, perhaps it was over the ocean?
Keep in mind that there are definitions for these terms.
"near miss" means coming up on 200 meters distance between two objects if > 400 meters up, otherwise it means whatever the tower decides it means (and presumably for them it means being in controlled airspace at all, e.g. having a drone above the airport building itself)
No. Any distance of up to 1,000 meters is "near miss" for uncontrolled (by tower) object around the passenger plane.
There is no "but I was far enough" bs.
Person than do not flight A LOT or do not pilot PASSENGER planes will never understand of the risks, stress and increasing field for error.
Pilot, when preparing for landing is suppose to be 99% concentrated on whats below him.
for those of you who don't know the geography of los angeles, LAX is basically surrounded on 3 sides by dense urban buildup, and then the ocean. the flight path for landing goes over the entire city including downtown, and the runways are sandwiched by freeways and major boulevards on all sides. the approach at night is quite dramatic visually, if you're lucky enough to snag a window seat. i very much enjoy trying to identify everything as i fly over.
it truly is "the motherboard". people who have never flown in before are shocked to see it. it's something else. the only thing that compares in the US is probably chicago, but it's not the same scale, and LA also has geography which adds to the visual drama. tokyo is similar but not quite the same kind of approach. i don't recall any airport in europe even approaching the visual appeal of the LAX approach. i've never flown into mexico city, from looking at maps it's probably close, but physically it's nowhere near as large as the LA metro (including IE, OC, etc.). LA is huge. yuuuuuge.
it is bounded by office highrises, datacenters, hotels, and housing. in my opinion it's likely the most dangerous airport in the US in terms of potential damage from a non-terrorist crash. i can't think of any airports in the US that are quite the same. it's currently the global #5 volume airport but the insane amount of traffic from asia will probably make it #1 within a few years. there is a major expansion and renovation project happening right now.
A few more of this and realistic or not and the FAA will ban any drones in a significant radius of any aerodome effectively ending most drone activity.
This might be a naive question, but what would happen if a hobby drone collided with a jet? As long as it doesn't hit the engines, wouldn't the damage be negligible?
It depends on the size of the drone and where it hits.
I am not sure how large these drones are, but if they have the mass of a flock of large seagulls, say, it could disable an engine (like the US Airways jet).
A collision with a wing could cause substantial damage to the wing which would change the aerodynamics, and that could be potentially dangerous at low altitudes because of the neighborhoods underneath. Debris could fall from the sky and injure or kill someone. I doubt it would come close to tearing off a wing.
A collision with the fuselage could breach the cabin which is dangerous in itself, but would not cause a decompression at that altitude.
A collision with the windscreen of the flight deck would be dangerous for obvious reasons. In the minor case, it can blind the pilots temporarily. In the worst case, debris from the drone would incapacitate the pilot during the most dangerous phase of flight: landing or departure.
What is really dangerous is the speed at which the aircraft hits the mass of the drone. It may seem like the aircraft would just kill the drone, and that is probably the case with most drones, but if it has large mass, it wouldn't.
The most dangerous scenario is if a drone hits the control surface like the flaps (very important for landing), or the horizontal stabilizer in the tail, it could be disastrous.
The airflow would be trying to prevent a collision with the front of the wing, and a drone would simply go where the wind blows. Which is to say if a drone flew straight for an airplane wing, it would fly around the wing and suddenly explode in the massive turbulence behind the wing. This would look very surprising because to the naked eye there is nothing behind the wing.
Hitting the fuselage, or entering an engine is probably more realistic. Both would be expensive, but won't be a threat to the passengers. Maybe hitting the wingtips would be doable ... not sure.
It can stagnate to the point of bugs not having much of an issue staying on the wing during flight. I remember a case when I was flight training where we had a little spider as a passenger on the top of the starboard wing for the duration of the flight. The little guy didn't fall off until the wing stalled out when we were landing.
There isn't really any "turbulence" behind any modern wing in typical flight regimes. They're very low drag, so flow off the trailing edge is as smooth as the upstream flow.
One word, birds. We hit them frequently, and a goose weighs a lot more than most drones. This is panicking over shark attacks while commuting in your car while smoking cigarettes. Sure we need to set limits, but most of this is FUD.
Yeah, but drones are harder than geese. I would speculate that one could easily break an engine, and smash out the cockpit windshield. I doubt it would cause critical structural damage otherwise, but it would be illuminating to do some tests (bird strike tests are done).
One possibility is to limit the weight of the drones, which will limit the damage they can inflict.
One thing to remember is that commercial jets have very thin aluminum skin. It's very unlike your car door which is typically thicker steel sheet. When jets crash the wreckage is shredded metal laying flat on the ground. So they're more fragile than they seem.
I would imagine hitting the engine is probably the safest thing that could happen. The engines are made of titanium alloys and designed to not fail catastrophically. The rest of the aircraft is made of soft materials by comparison.
A jet engine that ingests any metal object the size of a drone motor will take serious damage. The engine may continue to run, but there will be blade damage. Vibration sensors indicate how bad the problem is. Most likely, there will be an engine shutdown and a precautionary landing. The plane goes out of service, the engine is replaced, and the damaged engine goes in for a major overhaul.
The aircraft operator will be looking for someone to stick with the repair bill. Each engine on the A-380 today costs about $13 million.
That's the good case. Here's a picture of an A-6E which crashed after an engine ingested a pencil-sized hex wrench.[1]
Would not expect it to be any worse than a bird strike, which I hear are common enough. Eventually the firmware of the drone would know to avoid airplanes at all cost and perhaps have some sort of equipment in there to limit them ever flying close to airplanes. The regulation should ideally force this, for drones to have sensors and firmware to avoid airplanes.
Bird strikes are bad enough. And lots of efforts made to lure birds away from airports.
Consider if you loaded the drone into a cannon and fired it at a stationary airplane, hitting at 250MPH. That's 366 feet per second. Like a low-velocity bullet. Into an aluminum airframe. A BB going that speed will puncture a pop can. A 5lb drone going that speed may puncture the skin of an airplane?
Can't help of thinking of the foam strike causing the Columbia space shuttle disaster
"Investigators into the Columbia accident have estimated that the dislodged foam was about 19 by 11.5 by 5.5 inches (48 by 29 by 14 cm), weighed about 26.7 ounces, or 1.7 lb (0.75 kg) and impacted the Shuttle at nearly 530 mph (850 km/h). For the sake of a rough comparison, this block of foam would be about the same size and weight as a large loaf of bread."
That report bothers me. How did the foam achieve such a relative velocity? It was part of the Shuttle; it dislodged; it hit the shuttle further along. Does the report mean "impacted the Shuttle while both were travelling at nearly 530"?
The shuttle was faster than mach 2 (and accelerating) at time of impact - I presume the foam had decelerated significantly between breaking off and hitting the wing. I suppose you could say the shuttle hit the foam rather than the other way round.
I think drones are cool and would love to get one.
However, I think there are too many entitled asses that pretty much think they can do whatever they want. You wouldn't believe th number of drones they now have flying at cars and coffee events. I'm also fairly certain that none of these drone operators have insurance so imagine the scenario of drone operator (likely without a whole lot of experience) + many expensive cars (but that's not the point). Not gonna end well.
Sooner or later, a drone strike will happen if left unchecked.
If I recall correctly, GPS receivers for non-military use are specifically designed not to operate over 60,000 feet altitude or 1,000 knots velocity. So it's not un-precedented.
The pilot of the aircraft, a Lufthansa A380-800, reported seeing the drone above him. The reported near miss distance of 200 feet is very close for an aircraft with a 260 foot wingspan and a tail tip 60 feet above the pilot.
WTF is someone doing flying a drone at 5000 feet over downtown LA in the LAX approach path? That drone operator needs to be found and arrested.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11290674