Drone Sightings Near Other Aircraft Up Dramatically 132
schwit1 writes The government is getting near-daily reports — and sometimes two or three a day — of drones flying near airplanes and helicopters or close to airports without permission, federal and industry officials tell The Associated Press. It's a sharp increase from just two years ago when such reports were still unusual. Many of the reports are filed with the Federal Aviation Administration by airline pilots. But other pilots, airport officials and local authorities often file reports as well, said the officials, who agreed to discuss the matter only on the condition that they not be named because they weren't authorized to speak publicly. Michael Toscano, president of a drone industry trade group, said FAA officials also have verified the increase to him. While many of the reports are unconfirmed, raising the possibility that pilots may have mistaken a bird or another plane in the distance for a drone, the officials said other reports appear to be credible.
These idiots are going to ruin it for everyone (Score:5, Insightful)
Drones are so much fun and you can get so many cool photos and video from them.
Yet these morons flying drones near airports are going to ruin it for everyone. Expect to see them heavily regulated or banned soon.
This is why we can't have nice things. :(
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Drones are so much fun and you can get so many cool photos and video from them.
Yet these morons flying drones near airports are going to ruin it for everyone. Expect to see them heavily regulated or banned soon.
This is why we can't have nice things. :(
No need to worry. The Free Market will sort this out.
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I'm a general aviation pilot and I can tell the difference between a turkey vulture, a crow, a hawk, a duck, and a goose on the takeoff roll and the final approach. I'm also an RC pilot and I'm sure I could properly identify a quadcopter or RC airplane. I've experienced a near miss with a turkey vulture at 3000' and watched an egret flying towards the coast about 1000' below me. Drones don't have flapping wings or feathers and I don't buy for a second that a light aircraft or helicopter pilot would mista
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According to that logic pilots didn't see that many birds a few years ago and are now suddenly seeing more birds. I'm pretty sure they're seeing drones.
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Re:These idiots are going to ruin it for everyone (Score:4, Insightful)
At the speeds commercial aircraft are moving, yes, I could see a pilot mistaking a bird soaring for a RC airplane.
I was in a Cessna, in the pattern to land, I had just a couple seconds to avoid a buzzard. That was, nothing visible to "what's that?" to "oh shit!". I banked hard hard to miss it. The others in the plane were a bit freaked, and happy at the same time. They didn't realize what was happening, but the one who saw the bird barely miss the windshield was very happy I did it. It would have hit his side. That roughly a 5 pound bird with a 65 inch wingspan. That'd be a pretty big drone.
Here is a video of another pilot with a similar incident, except he didn't even have time to evade. He was going a bit faster than I was.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--XhLJMzRB4 [youtube.com]
Commercial aircraft are moving much faster, and the pilots are busy doing pesky things like preparing to land. Seeing a bird or drone is nothing more than a glance and a "I saw something".
You can find lots of bird strike videos on YouTube.
With the number of birds (animal kind) in the air versus the number of RC aircraft and drones, statistically I'd say most sightings were birds.
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Not to mention the fastest drones (Quadcopters mostly is what we're talking about) can do about 30-40 MPH. It's hard enough to pick out even large twin engine aircraft against the backdrop of a populated city and usually what helps is that fact they are moving against that back ground.
Re:These idiots are going to ruin it for everyone (Score:4, Informative)
At the speeds commercial aircraft are moving, yes, I could see a pilot mistaking a bird soaring for a RC airplane.
It has less to do with relative speed than relative speed vectors. The most difficult target to see, even when advised of its presence, is coming from a constant bearing decreasing range as there is little change in position with respect to field of vision. I have flown past, on three separate occasions, mylar balloons while at cruise flight levels (FL300-FL390) at 400-450 KTAS. The size and shape are arguably similar to drones, so distinguishing a drone from a bird while at drone operating altitudes should be equally trivial, assuming the event wasn't just a flash in the visual periphery.
Commercial aircraft are moving much faster, and the pilots are busy doing pesky things like preparing to land. Seeing a bird or drone is nothing more than a glance and a "I saw something".
My VMC scan at cruise is much less rigorous than while in a terminal environment. The flying pilot should be scanning outside (VMC), and leaving box work to the non-flying pilot. "See and avoid..."
All that said, I have not ever encountered a "drone" in my 15000 hours of flying, respecting the fact that I don't find myself in the environment (which most likely is not large commercial airports) in which drones operate. OTOH I usually have about 1 birdstrike per year, most of which I never see- only hear the impact.
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ce ne sont pas un troll (Score:2)
Pilots can't tell the planet Venus from a UFO, even when clearly marked. [ufoevidence.org] Granted, this presupposes the pilot knew "Arabic" for that bit of Looney Tunes ontological camouflage to work
Highly trained observers my ass.
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Drones are so much fun and you can get so many cool photos and video from them.
Yet these morons flying drones near airports are going to ruin it for everyone. Expect to see them heavily regulated or banned soon.
...
Recently on the news in Australia. If they see drones operating near bushfire where water bombing aircraft/helicopters are flying they will ground them.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/201... [abc.net.au]
Current regulations are that drones have to be 30 metres away from people, they are not be used in built-up areas, not to exceed 400 feet in height and not be flown in controlled air space, but there is no law against flying near bushfires. Drones must not create a hazard for other aircraft, but if the device was several hundred metres away from its operator, how would they know if a firefighting aircraft was approaching?
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that makes no sense. who are the "they" and how could they ground the drones??? as for drones exceeded 400 feet in height, that woudl be one tall motherflippin badass drone.
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No, our retarded fire chief wants to ground the firefighter aircraft and then blame any resulting fire death on the operator of the drone.
Because you know a 2kg drone is really going to survive getting anywhere near the prop wash of a giant support helicopter and take it out...
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Birdstrikes are known to destroy engines and you really don't want to be flying a fully loaded water bomb and lose half your power...
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They have yes. But have they ever destroyed a helicopter engine?
This is a serious point I'm trying to make. Planes move forward at an insane speed. They bring with them very little time to get out of the way and the front facing turbines ingest objects with ease. Helicopters on the other hand move more slowly. When a helicopter is nearby it moves more slowly and due mostly to the fact that it doesn't take advantage of aerodynamic lift across it's non-existent wings it needs to move an incredible amount of a
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No a quadrocopter and a bird will likely get downed by the propwash before it gets anywhere near a helicopter.
Why reply when you have clearly not comprehended the dudes post?
If a drone gets UNDER the rotor disk, sweet, it gets blown into oblivion. But thats only one of three possible scenarios.
If it gets ABOVE or LATERALLY CLOSE to the disk, it could either be sucked downwards into the rotor disk, or, as Splab correctly said, be pulled into the tip vortex ring, which would see the drone be lifted over and into the disk. See this diagram [faasafety.gov] for a quick look at the aerodynamics at play.
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I have, you have not comprehended the differences. There are multiple critical differences that makes it far less of a risk for a helicopter. Two I have mentioned already, speed and wash.
A third is the prop mass. A turbine blade has very little mass and is very fragile and has incredibly tight tolerances. A helicopter blade is large, heavy, more likely to destroy anything it touches than be destroyed itself, and if you take a chunk out of it its ability function isn't necessarily immediately impaired.
A litt
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you're my favorite kind of troll, the deliberately obtuse dimwit. srsly, no criticism, I do it all the time and it's hilarious when I see others do it.
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Not an engine incident, but a bird strike that forced a medical chopper to land yesterday. http://www.ems1.com/animal-attacks/articles/2021439-Bird-strike-downs-Texas-medical-helicopter/ [ems1.com]
Also, search for images for bird strike helicopter and see what shows up. Some serious damage.
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No, a pilot decided to land a helicopter nothing more. It's written in the article. Helicopters will happily keep flying with broken windows.
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http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-28224917
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It might have been the pilot's choice, but it negates the assertion that the downwash would prevent a bird or drone from reaching the chopper's hull.
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Birds have an instinct for survival and will move away from the helicopter.
Somebody flying a drone and looking through the camera at the fire/police chase/topless neighbor/whatever, will probably not be paying attention to the airspace around them.
Heck, if you go out to the flying field, people crash into each other all the time, and that is when they are paying attention!
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But I digress, my point is that anyone operating these type of craft "drones" should be operating like they would any other flying vehicle and be aware of their surroundings. It's a damn quad-copter with FPV feedback!, why the hell wouldn't you be constantly looking around?
It's not like sitting in the aircraft, and even pilots sitting in the aircraft miss other aircraft now and then. You've got a dinky little monitor and a relatively narrow-angle camera, and you're trying to see incoming aircraft? Good luck with that.
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It's not like sitting in the aircraft, and even pilots sitting in the aircraft miss other aircraft now and then. .
Miss them all the time! Aircraft are small and the sky REALLY big! I've had warnings from ATC about aircraft on a converging path at the same (reported - probably uncalibrated transponders) altitude, and even though I'm sitting in a low-wing bubble-canopied aircraft (so great vis) did not see a single one! Not a peep on the radio from the other aircraft either - bloody scary!
Re:These idiots are going to ruin it for everyone (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is that R/C and your modern drone are completely different beasts.
In the R/C world, you're constantly controlling your vehicle - because if you don't, you'll either bust airspace or it'll crash. You have to FLY an RC vehicle.
Modern drones though, basically do "all the hard stuff" for you. You basically tell it to take off, and boom, it's in a stable hover 1m above the ground in front of you, and it'll do that with zero input from you until the batteries or fuel runs out. The autopilot on board keeps it in a stable position.
The user of a drone basically just commands the drone to go to places, while the onboard computer figures out how to do that and maintain stable flight. There isn't much more to ones that can go from GPS waypoint to waypoint.
The fact that the user doesn't really need to "fly" the vehicle leads to dumb users (they are REALLY that simple to fly) to do stupid things. FPV gets addicting, so they're concentrating on that rather than watching what their drone is doing, and oh, you just crashed into something you didn't see because your eyes were on the camera feed and not on the craft. (In the R/C world, you can never take your eyes off the aircraft or you can lose it).
Basically the ability of the drones to fly themselves results in the pilots going from having to learn how to fly (and learning the rules and regulations as a side effect) to basically ordering it off of Amazon, opening the box, clicking "fly", and boom they're in the landing path of aircraft.
Reminds me of that Simpsons episode where Sidewhow Bob jumps in a fighter plane, sees how the Air Force has dumbed it down to "Fly" and "Stop" buttons. The modern drone is just like that.
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Gah! Where are my mod points when I need them? Thanks for an informative and insightful reply.
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As technology advances the list of things that need restrictions will have to grow. There is no avoiding that.
No, you're wrong (Score:2)
"Modern drones though, basically do "all the hard stuff" for you."
No they don't - they have auto stabilisation and thats it. You fly a drone in any kind of wind and it'll drift and you have to constantly adjust the throttle to keep it at the right height. Perhaps the really expensive kit has GPS and can keep itself at a certain location and height but the cheap ones most certainly do not.
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No they don't - they have auto stabilisation and thats it. You fly a drone in any kind of wind and it'll drift and you have to constantly adjust the throttle to keep it at the right height. Perhaps the really expensive kit has GPS and can keep itself at a certain location and height but the cheap ones most certainly do not.
You need to keep up. Unless for you, "really expensive" is $350.
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You might want to reacquaint yourself with modern drones. They HAVE altitude control. Throttle? You have two buttons, "Up" and "Down". They do everything for you. And you don't need GPS t
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"ou might want to reacquaint yourself with modern drones. They HAVE altitude control."
Not the ones I've seen. I'm sure if your the same type of rich boomer who can afford 1K for a plaything then you can buy any sort of functionality, but I'm talking about the sort of drones you find in high street shops.
"Throttle? You have two buttons, "Up" and "Down"."
Seriously? Mine has throttle, rotate, forward/backwards, left/right plus trim buttons for all the them.
"And you don't need GPS to stay in one place - a downw
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Maybe this suggests a technical solution.
Equip drones with GPS and nav databases so that they will not fly in controlled airspace. (with the ability to override with some sort of approval).
There are flights in uncontrolled airspace but it is much less of an issue.
What's the reason? (Score:2)
Re: What's the reason? (Score:2)
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Yet these morons flying drones near airports are going to ruin it for everyone. Expect to see them heavily regulated or banned soon.
Yes, we know how much the government hates people flying unlicensed small aircraft, and you can fly one into a plane's path and cause panic or injury to the passengers. Hey, maybe it would be possible to carry a small about of explosives on one -- it would make a good "instrument of terror", so we have to take them seriously. War on Terror! RAH!
But lately, more attention has been focused on how innocent hobbyists are being hassled with the new regulations, and folks are starting to wake up to how the whole
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Some countries have far stricter laws and model aircraft are restricted to specific parks in built up areas and are not to be flown in public space and most definitely not over other people's properties. Drone usage logically needs to be restricted and licensed and all drones registered. They are not for idiots to fly in public spaces where they can crash into vehicles on the road or people. That is a sound normal restriction for a hobby that can place others at risk. When it comes to explosives, flammable
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Denmark is a good example, they are not to be flown within 150m of any building.
Interestingly enough, this is not a problem for R/C enthusiasts, but drone "operators" seem to think they can do as they damn well choose.
Have had people do low flyover with their drone, no marking, no information on how to get hold of them and they are not flying in line of sight, if that fucker crashes into someone and causes bodily harm, its near impossible to pin responsibility.
Re: These idiots are going to ruin it for everyone (Score:2)
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And that is why we have lame (law/rule)s. :(
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Drones are so much fun and you can get so many cool photos and video from them.
Yet these morons flying drones near airports are going to ruin it for everyone. Expect to see them heavily regulated or banned soon.
This is why we can't have nice things. :(
Actually, I think someone will find a way to steal them from the air and that will be the end of free roaming drones.
Once people start seeing news of "my drone suddenly took off and left", people will stop attaching $300 cameras to their bellies.
And that's why we can't have nice things unless everybody else has nice things too. Which is the most disregarded part of economic inequality and yes the easiest to sell.
CURSES! You've divulged my evil business plan! (Score:2)
Thanks a lot, Thanshin!
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But i was assured that we didnt need regulation for these lil drones! Right here on /.
They told me regulation would kill a burgeoning small business entrepenaurs by grounding them before they even started.
And that we could trust them, no regulation needed, to just do what was right.
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Yet these morons flying drones near airports are going to ruin it for everyone.
No, the FAA already ruined it for everyone by redefining the rules against congressional legislation. They've also ruined it for business by not having any sort of a plan to allow them to be used commercially.
IMO people like you who think good behavior will let you have nice things when your government is suppose to work for you are the problem.
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Further, OUTSIDE navigable airspace, a Federal judge has ruled FAA has no authority over them.
These idiots are going to ruin it for everyone (Score:1)
Expect to see them heavily regulated or banned soon.
Exactly how are they going to ban them? Short of banning them completely from stores -- a heavy-handed move that would likely meet significant legal obstacles -- they're going to be out there. You can't control where people fly these things, either. You could try jamming commonly-used RC frequencies to stop people from manually flying them here or there, but you can't stop someone who might pre-program a GPS-guided drone to deliberately go into contro
Are they drones? (Score:1, Informative)
Or are they remote-controlled Italian hyperspace toads being flown by Wi-Fi signals from an evil stealth Toad satellite over Chicago?
So now webelieve them? (Score:2)
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They never refused to believe. They always knew what it was, and pretended not to.
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Of course they pretended to not know what they were. If you keep telling people that it is just weather balloons and no one believed you, I'd start pretending that nothing happened too.
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Why the fuck would someone post shit like that under their user account? The mods have already come down on you and there are only two posts as I type this.
Usually because at the moment of writing they found it funny. It happens often when one posts before the first coffee or minutes after leaving the workplace. In the first case, because the humor detectors are still asleep and say to the brain "Yeah, whatever, that's hilarious, go with it.". In the latter case, the thought process is more like "WOHOO! one minute to GO! Everything's great! Everything's fantastic! Share your happiness with the world!"
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We speak the truth, no matter what!
So when are you actually going to start speaking the truth then?
All I see is lolgibberish.
That's weird (Score:2, Funny)
I was about to say that I've noticed a lot more planes around my drones lately.
It is annoying when much of a comment is left in (Score:1)
its title.
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neighborhoods?
huh?
what are you trying to ask?
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Operator has line of sight to craft = RC.
Otherwise, drone.
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In Canada... (Score:2, Informative)
In Canada, drones are more widely used than in the US, mostly because you can actually legally use a drone for commercial purposes. There are laws about drones: no flying at night, no flying within 5 miles of an airport, no flying above 1200 feet. Spying on people is also illegal. You can take pictures of people on the beach, not through bedroom windows of a 20 story building. Laws are fairly heavily enforced. The police have drones too, and theirs will go after yours. At the most fun: you lose your d
Unauthorized FAA Leaks (Score:2, Offtopic)
Not only does the FAA have to deal with these unauthorized drone flights, they have to deal with leaks from within the FAA to the media. These leakers are publicly stating that they are in no way authorized to speak to the media, freely declaring their guilt.
When is the FAA going to crack down on these officials who are leaking information to the media when they have been banned?
This seems to be happening quite alot, and it seems that these officials are able to leak information with impunity, knowing that
go figger (Score:1)
the Government (Score:5)
"The government is getting near-daily reports..."
I want Slashdot readers to know I love them for so many insights. But let's not be arrogant about US citizenship. Many readers are not so blessed, and when we say "the government" they may be confused about which we are referring to.
Please, then, say "the US government" if that is what you are speaking of. Notice that most of those outsiders specify which government they are speaking of. And for all you little foreigners, I hope you benefit from this message.
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"The Government" as reported by "The Associated Press" which quotes people from the "Federal Aviation Administration" not to mention a website run by Americans.
That description with so many country specific parties can only really match one government. I don't think anyone here is actually confused about this.
Re: the Government (Score:1)
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why don't you start your own news tech website? No, seriously.
Please. I'll give you money...
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"The government is getting near-daily reports..."
As I hinted, 'the government' is a useless phrase. Are we referring to the US Commerce Dept? The US FDA? The California Dept. of Food and Agriculture? The Texas Dept. of White Supremacy? There are ten thousand agencies, most unrelated to the others and few that the US Administration can be held responsible for (but go ahead, blame Obama). It is helpful to be specific.
Dangerous? Really? (Score:2)
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The Hudson "landing" was caused by a flock of geese (and only possible with an experienced pilot with balls of steel and a shitload of luck). What jet engines are tested for is that they won't explode and damage and take the plane down with them right away. They are not guaranteed to keep working and they sure as hell don't provide normal thrust afterwards. Bird strikes are critical events. A single bird can bring down a plane if it strikes close to ground (during take off or landing).
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OK, I'm talking more about commercial airliners here rather than piston engined aircraft, but don't they test those engines by firing frozen chickens onto them? If a lightweight plastic drone presents such a risk to an Airbus, then I might holiday closer to home on the future. Do flocks of drones really sit around on the grass at airports waiting to throw themselves into the path of approaching aircraft? Of course I'm not seriously suggesting that they present zero risk, until some loon packs them with explosives before deliberately placing them in a flight path.
Aircraft engine casinga are designed to contain a fan blade breaking lose. They're designed to explode outwards (as demonstrated by the Trent 900's) and aircraft are designed to fly even when you've got one engine out of commission... however.
1. Do you really want to test how well they're built on a regular basis when they're in operation.
2. Do you really want to pay more for air travel because they're replacing engines due to "drone strikes".
So sure as shit an Airbus (or Boeing) will survive a drone
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Granted most of these drones are the result of idiots - the same kind who shine 5mw or higher lasers at planes for kicks.. but drones could potentially be used as an effective terror weapon.
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Oh, that would be nasty, but it would be nothing compared to the danger of simply causing a jet engine to fall apart from obstruction. And with intakes, you don't even really have to be all that accurate, because the engine helps out by sucking in everything in front of it.
Yes, these could could be effective at causing fear, but their use to terrorism doesn't even really require them to be explosive.
Frankly, though, I think that the amount of work that they would need to put into a sustained drone program,
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but don't they test those engines by firing frozen chickens onto them?
Yep and the passing criteria is that the engine doesn't destroy the wing to which it is attached and is able to shut down before it sheds it's blades in every direction.
Now that said I pilot should be able to safely land with one engine.
assholes ruin it (Score:1)
Simple solution (Score:3)
Pay Bubba and his buddies to do patrols around the airport. Any drone which flies within a certain area is fair game for target practice.
This has the smell (Score:1)
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I just had a 1500 mile flight last week on a 757, one engine's starter valve was defective, we all had to board a different jet, it caused a 2 hour delay. The people picking us up at the destination also had to reschedule. Multiply that by 200 to 300 passengers, and that's a best case scenario.
Put the tinfoil back, it's better used to keep celery f
Identify yourself! (Score:1)
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You're going to be firing bullets into the air? Sounds like a smart move.
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Yup.
So what is the ratio of sightings to collision incidents?
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Yes but the fact that there are zero incidents arising from these sightings implies there should be a considered and measured response, not people running around with their hair on fire.