
Drones Are the New Threat to Airline Safety - rezist808
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-04/drones-are-the-new-threat-to-airline-safety
======
ececconi
If a bird strike through an airplane engine can cause major damage to an
engine, it's not hard to imagine a drone being able to cause damage. I think
there's got to be some education about no fly zones near airports. Lots of
this seems to be common sense, but anyone with some cash can buy a drone and
fly it in improper areas.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird_strike](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird_strike)

~~~
bri3d
I think birds are more destructive than drones because they travel in flocks,
increasing the potential for a catastrophic complete loss of power during
takeoff.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I imagine also that skin and bones are _much_ harder than PCBs and paperthin
plastic / styrofoam most drones are made of.

~~~
yompers888
It would seem that, at airplane speeds, mass would be the primary concern.
While the first thing you hit on a drone is its cheap plastic propellers and
superstructure, at its core is a dense battery, which can be fairly heavy on
the common DJI phantom drones (DJI 3 weighs 1280 g (=45 oz. ) with battery.)
For comparison, a common pigeon (is that the bird that gets hit?) weighs ~9-13
oz.

Having said that, I don't know if these are the drones that pilots are
spotting. They're the most common enthusiast drone (~$500-$1k), though I'm
sure they're outnumbered by the junk toy variety.

------
jessriedel
There are ~500k drones registered in the US with the FAA

[http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/02/08/faa-drone-
regi...](http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/02/08/faa-drone-registration-
eclipses-regular-planes/80002730/)

So the total market value of all drones posing significant risk to aircraft is
probably on the order of $50M. If one of these were to accidentally down an
airliner of 100 people, that would be $1B of damage, using the ~$10M
statistical value of human life in the US.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life)

So even if you think it is generally bad to impose strong regulations based on
merely hypothetical risks, this might be a place where it makes sense.

~~~
Coincoin
Also, I think they predict (probably correctly) that it's only going to become
more popular so they might as well regulate it before it's too late

~~~
manarth
It is already regulated:

> Current FAA rules restrict drone operators from flying within five miles of
> an airport and above 400 feet

The issue is either a lack of awareness of the regulations, or, perhaps a
willingness to flout the regulations.

Many people people think little of driving 10-15mph above the speed limit, and
will only slow down when speed-cameras are installed and visible. Perhaps the
answer is visible publicised enforcement.

~~~
civilian
The speed limit was once informed by traffic safety engineers, but has been
artificially lowered by environmentalists (gas engines are most efficient at
45mph) and "safety at all costs!!!!" politicians. Which is why I think little
of driving 10-15 mph above the speed limit when I can safely do so. (Most
commonly on highways and rural roads.)

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _Which is why I think little of driving 10-15 mph above the speed limit when
> I can safely do so. (Most commonly on highways and rural roads.)_

Frankly, this is why most car accidents happen. Drivers thinking the rules
don't apply to them.

I'm all for _much_ stricter enforcement of traffic laws, even if the speed
limit is "lowered by environmentalists" (they kind of have a point here
though; also probably the only rule drivers blatantly ignore more often than
speed limits is safe driving distance). We can have a discussion about
adjusting the laws, but first people need to actually obey them. Otherwise
it's not civilization, it's a jungle.

~~~
civilian
Safe driving distance! Yeah, that's huge. I am strict about keeping a 2.5-3
second distance. On the other hand, my cousin is a slave to the speed limit---
but that means when we carpooled to Portland during friday rush hour, he set
it to cruise control and had a 0.5 or 1 second gap behind him and the next
driver.

I'm 29, above average intelligence, strong visual-spatial, never been in an
accident. The rules don't apply to me. ;) This country doesn't have
"discussions" anymore, there's no incentive for a politician to increase the
speed limit or get rid of mandatory minimums. So fuck it.

Let me know if you ever visit Seattle, it'd be cool to run into you!

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _I 'm 29, above average intelligence, strong visual-spatial, never been in
> an accident. The rules don't apply to me. ;)_

Haha :). Well, glad to hear that, and I hope you won't have to be in (or
witness) an accident ever.

> _This country doesn 't have "discussions" anymore, there's no incentive for
> a politician to increase the speed limit or get rid of mandatory minimums._

Yeah, mine neither. I think it's a global phenomenon in the West now.

> _So fuck it._

I still _want_ to believe there's a better way...

> _Let me know if you ever visit Seattle, it 'd be cool to run into you!_

Why thank you :). The same if you happen to visit Poland (especially the
southern areas)!

~~~
civilian
So, here's a path to safer driving. I think that the electronic devices you
can add to cars to track acceleration & movement will be really helpful.
[http://blog.esurance.com/drivesense-
discount/](http://blog.esurance.com/drivesense-discount/) With big data, and
knowing when they were in an accident, we'll be able to identify more signs of
bad driving. But just having an accelerometer/GPS on the car isn't quite
enough...

I think there's a lot of potential in self-driving cars to identify bad
drivers. When you have thousands of cars using LiDAR to accurately track the
movements (and crashes) of human-driven cars, we'll gain a better
understanding of what makes an unsafe driver, and we'll be able to identify
incidents that were _almost_ a crash. With more LiDAR-recording cars on the
road, insurance companies could ask Google to send them examples of bad
driving for all their insurees.

So, one day, I might get a higher bill from State Farm because hey, they have
evidence of me being an unsafe driver. If it's backed by data, then I'm in
favor of it.

Haha! I'll absolutely reach out if I visit southern Poland. But I was making a
pun--- "run into" is also used in american english to describe a car crashing
into something. i.e. "I ran into a stop sign."

~~~
TeMPOraL
Yeah, sensors and tracking technology will be helpful. Self-driving cars even
more, but before that I agree tracking seems like a reasonable way to go
(despite the privacy issues), and there's even a way to reliably feed the
results back to the drivers - insurance companies have a strong incentive to
use this data, and the drivers I know are surprisingly responsive to the
potential of getting their insurance rates raised ;).

> _Haha! I 'll absolutely reach out if I visit southern Poland. But I was
> making a pun--- "run into" is also used in american english to describe a
> car crashing into something. i.e. "I ran into a stop sign."_

I suspected you might have been doing it, but decided to assume the non-pun
interpretation was also true :).

------
13thLetter
It's true that a problem could happen, and I'm glad the risk is being taken
seriously, but a lot of these reports (if not the overwhelming majority) feel
like pilots' UFO reports from the '60s. There are no photos, there are no
radar traces (often over some of the most carefully controlled airspace in the
world), there is no any sign that the drone wasn't a bird or something or even
existed at all. I'd like to have harder data on how often this is actually
happening.

~~~
manarth
There's a world of difference.

1\. There is evidence that drones exist.

2\. The reports are being made by qualified recognised professionals, who are,
at the time of reporting, clearly in good health, good state of mind, and
sober (or they would not be in command of an aircraft).

3\. The reports are sometimes made in real-time (pilots reporting to ATC over
radio whilst on approach), or very shortly after the incident.

4\. The reports are detailed (in some cases even describing the colour of the
drone).

5\. The incidents are backed up by secondary reports: e.g. drones being
reported around an airport without necessarily causing an airprox incident.

All that said, perhaps better data would help document the degree of risk. The
drones that are directly radio-controlled (rather than having a programmed
flight-plan) will usually operate on a small set of standard frequencies,
which could be monitored and recorded. Add some video surveillance, and this
could add more documentary evidence to the reports.

~~~
13thLetter
I'll give you Point 1, of course, but points 2-4 apply just as well to the UFO
reports. Many of them were from experienced professional pilots, reported
immediately after the incident and with great detail. UFO skeptics wrote a
number of books on the topic back in the '70s; they're worth reading if we're
about to go through another period of people reporting mysterious objects in
the sky that never quite manage to show up on photos or radar.

~~~
manarth
> points 2-4 apply just as well to the UFO reports

> mysterious objects in the sky that never quite manage to show up on photos
> or radar

You are quite right to refer to UFO reports that came from highly qualified
pilots, etc. Those were reports made by highly trained professionals, with
lots of detail, etc.

I would counter that by saying that pilots in that era were encouraged to
report any strange/unidentified experience. So they genuinely reported
anything that could add weight - either for or against - such as lightning
strikes, odd cloud formations, odd solar events, etc.

And those UFO sightings were specifically things that, despite all the detail,
were, by definition, not identifiable. And given the description of most of
the objects, they would have expected them to show up on radar (given the
described size, and the understanding of radar at the time…it's quite possible
that a combination of new stealth technology and the era's radar limitations
obscured this possibility).

The main difference is that all of those phenomenon were _unidentified_ : the
pilots never had sufficient detail to match their evidence to a real-world
experience.

I'm sure that during that era there were also all sorts of airprox events that
were recorded, but didn't necessarily have all that much follow-up since,
simply because the circumstances were clear and identifiable.

In these drone reports, the pilots have clearly and succinctly identified the
issue.

It's one thing to report vague lights, and suggest it may be a UFO (because
there's nothing to identify what Flying Object might be causing the lights);
it's a very different case to very accurately describe a drone, report it as a
drone, and have strong correlation with other reports of drone flights near
that airfield.

I really wouldn't give too much credence to the lack of photos or radar.

As mentioned before, the dimensions of most drones preclude detection on most
radar (not that they _can 't_ be detected, but that most radar systems will
filter them out as noise), and the fact that almost all commercial jets don't
have a set of dashboard cams, that gives enough reason to understand why there
isn't an overwhelming wealth of evidence for drone airprox events.

~~~
13thLetter
> The main difference is that all of those phenomenon were unidentified: the
> pilots never had sufficient detail to match their evidence to a real-world
> experience.

There were no real-world experiences of UFOs, but it's not correct to say that
pilots didn't know what to expect -- flying saucers with a very specific
description were a well-established part of popular culture. A saucer-shaped
object at a great distance that moved quickly, made sharp turns which would be
impossible for a fixed-wing aircraft, and which would eventually disappear as
if it had moved straight away at high speed, was the standard description. It
would have been in the mind of any pilot, and indeed exactly that description
popped up innumerable times in the UFO reports.

------
utternerd
I looked at the list of sightings they published, and within a few entries
(specifically entry #10) found one purporting to have sighted a drone at
19,200 feet. (while the plane was at 19,500) This seems like an absurdly high
altitude for even a commercial drone, let alone the stuff people are buying
for personal use. Is it even possible for commercially available drones to fly
at this altitude, or could these be false-positives?

------
pj_mukh
Two things are clear,

a)The consumer drone industry is already adopting no-fly zones (some in
firmware) and the FAA has moved quicker to regulate this technology than any
other technology before. This is being squashed before it became a problem. I
wish the government did the same for other "dangerous" technology (guns
anyone?).

b) Putting "drones" in a news article is the click-baitiest clickbait. There
hasn't been actually any substantial news/incidents around drones that had to
be covered on a national level, other than the reactionary regulations. Let's
just admit to that.

