Gatwick drones -what utter stupidity and selfishness

[TheLurker]

One concern is the battery; most of a drone is plastic and will shatter if hit by a plane at 200mph (as do birds in small numbers), but the battery is tougher and could make a hole in something, maybe a fan blade.

And with many (most?) modern batteries there is always the unpleasant possibility of it rapidly converting itself into an incendiary device on impact.

[mattc]

With current tech, you could probably model quite accurately how easy/hard it is to deliberately hit an airliner with a remote-control 5kg drone, with the pilot outside the security perimeter. (couple of km?)

(that's assuming the worst case i.e. the turrurists aiming to hit one, rather than just create disruption.)


Anyway, it's not even in the news now - what drones??

[Jakob]

So, erhhh
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/gatwick-closure-some-sightings-may-have-been-of-police-drones-2018-12

[Wowbagger]

That's straight out of "The Man who was Thursday".

[ian]

I still don't understand why there has not been a single picture of the drone. This is UK, forchrissake, the country with probably the highest level of surveillance in the world.

'cos there wasn't one...…..

This, 100%. Not one picture, not one piece of evidence that there was an actual drone (that didn't belong to the authorities, anyway). Of course, now they can't admit it, so this stupid charade will roll on until everyone forgets about it.

[Beardy]

I still don't understand why there has not been a single picture of the drone. This is UK, forchrissake, the country with probably the highest level of surveillance in the world.

'cos there wasn't one...…..

This, 100%. Not one picture, not one piece of evidence that there was an actual drone (that didn't belong to the authorities, anyway). Of course, now they can't admit it, so this stupid charade will roll on until everyone forgets about it.

Thats the blame culture for you. Hide the facts so we can’t learn from our mistakes.

[Jakob]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/03/heathrow-and-gatwick-millions-anti-drone-technology

Well, at least someone got something out of this.

[ian]

Hopefully, they invested some of this cash in devices that can detect a drone actually exists because all the anti-drone technology in the world won't stop a non-existent one.

[Kim]

But the manufacturer claims it's 100% effective against imaginary drones!   

[Jurek]

Have we reached the point yet where the last two words of this thread's title can be removed without any loss of context?

[matthew]

Can we wait until my colleagues who were due to fly out the day after have been able to confirm they got home to their families.

[Jakob]

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jan/08/police-handed-new-anti-drone-powers-after-gatwick-disruption

So, rules introduced to deal with non-existing drones?
I'm also sure that these new rules would most definitely prevent any such future attack.

[PaulF]

Only briefly read the BBC version of the article but some of the changes seem sensible. For example currently it legal to fly a drone at 400’ 1km away from an airport which would put you in conflict with aircraft coming into land.  The new rules will remove this inconsistency which was one of BALPA’s concerns.

[Jakob]

Only briefly read the BBC version of the article but some of the changes seem sensible. For example currently it legal to fly a drone at 400’ 1km away from an airport which would put you in conflict with aircraft coming into land.  The new rules will remove this inconsistency which was one of BALPA’s concerns.

While I agree that the distance is short, what aircraft is at 400' altitude 1km from the threshold?. I'm also pretty certain that interfering with manned traffic was already illegal, so all it's doing is making something illegal...well, illegal.

They'd be far better of making drone identification mandatory for airline pilots...then the number of incidents would drop dramatically.

[JonBuoy]

Only briefly read the BBC version of the article but some of the changes seem sensible. For example currently it legal to fly a drone at 400’ 1km away from an airport which would put you in conflict with aircraft coming into land.  The new rules will remove this inconsistency which was one of BALPA’s concerns.

While I agree that the distance is short, what aircraft is at 400' altitude 1km from the threshold?. I'm also pretty certain that interfering with manned traffic was already illegal, so all it's doing is making something illegal...well, illegal.

They'd be far better of making drone identification mandatory for airline pilots...then the number of incidents would drop dramatically.

A glider.

[Greenbank]

Only briefly read the BBC version of the article but some of the changes seem sensible. For example currently it legal to fly a drone at 400’ 1km away from an airport which would put you in conflict with aircraft coming into land.  The new rules will remove this inconsistency which was one of BALPA’s concerns.

While I agree that the distance is short, what aircraft is at 400' altitude 1km from the threshold?

Typical approach slope is 3^o (from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_approach_(aeronautics) ).

1km * sin( 3 deg ) = 171.7 ft

Touchdown points on the runway aren't much further than 1km from the airport boundary so pretty much every aircraft landing at either, say, Heathrow or Gatwick is going to be well under 400ft 1km out.

[PaulF]

Only briefly read the BBC version of the article but some of the changes seem sensible. For example currently it legal to fly a drone at 400’ 1km away from an airport which would put you in conflict with aircraft coming into land.  The new rules will remove this inconsistency which was one of BALPA’s concerns.

While I agree that the distance is short, what aircraft is at 400' altitude 1km from the threshold?. I'm also pretty certain that interfering with manned traffic was already illegal, so all it's doing is making something illegal...well, illegal.

They'd be far better of making drone identification mandatory for airline pilots...then the number of incidents would drop dramatically.

More or less all of them on a standard glidepath. BALPA seem to agree

“Drones need to be kept well away from other aircraft. BALPA has presented the case for policies which will ensure sensible separation between drones and aircraft, including helicopters, which we don’t yet have.

“A drone at 400ft, 1km away from an airport is still directly in the flight path and that is plainly not safe and yet is allowed under the new legislation.

“Therefore, BALPA will continue to argue for a drone exclusion zone around airports of 5km in the interests of safety.”

https://www.balpa.org/Media-Centre/Press-Releases/Pilots-respond-to-Government-announcement-on-drone

EDIT Beaten to it by Greenbank

[Beardy]

As is usual with knee jerk changes to the law it misses two fundemental points. The (in this case alleged) actions causing the change were already illegal under current law and the already overworked police will no more be able to police the new laws than they were able to enforce the old ones.

[Mr Larrington]

Paging TimC...

[Kim]

Predictably, it's now possibly happening or maybe not at Heathrow... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-46803713

[Jakob]

You're right. 400' would be in the glide path of of most aircraft. (Although not on a powered approach).

However, afaik, all 'near misses' reported by BALPAs members have turned out not to be drones.

[Jurek]

New reports of drone sightings at Heathrow currently incoming.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-46803713

[andrewc]

Flights resumed (for now)   https://www.flightradar24.com/51.47,-0.47/12

[TheLurker]

As is usual with knee jerk changes...

These changes were in train before the fuss at Gatwick and have been through a fair bit of review.  Having had the very briefest dekko at them they don't seem unreasonable.   

They extend the drone prohibition zone (oooh euphonious) to something that the pilots think safe and the polis get to levy on the spot fines of up to 100 notes and more punitive options are, AIUI, available.  Not so sure about the registration requirements for drone owners, suspect that will turn out to be expensive and unworkable but there you go.

As for laws not stopping illegal activity; if you take that to absurd lengths you'd throw away the entire judicial code because every* law ever written has been broken.  The best you can ever hope for is that thinking types will note that there are rules and obey them.  As for the unthinking and downright wilful? If (big if) they're caught then they get punished, repeatedly if needs be.  Seems to more or less work with most laws.

One overview here  : https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/01/08/new_uk_drone_laws/


*Probably.

[Jakob]

 Registration in the US was $5. (Then a bunch of lawsuits stopped the Gov't from requiring it, but I think it's coming back).
Similar system is coming here in Canada (announced tomorrow actually).
 FWIW, they had, at one point, a 9km (radius) exclusion around any airfield here, which basically made it impossible to fly anywhere. It's been reduced to 5km and will be reduced further to 3.5km.