A British Airways flight came within 50 ft of smashing into a large drone over north London while coming in to land at Heathrow Airport, a report has revealed.
The 144-seater Airbus A320 flying from Stockholm was flying at more than 280 mph when it nearly hit the illegally flown drone 8,000 ft over north London. It is not currently known who was flying the drone at the time of the incident.
The pilot had just left a holding stack – a queue of planes which spirals down when they are unable to immediately land – when the drone passed 50 ft below the nose of the aircraft’. The device was described as ‘a large black “quadcopter” drone with a large, bulbous, round camera’, according to a report by the UK Airprox Board which investigates near misses.
Investigators rated the incident at 8.52am on March 15 this year as the highest possible risk – category A near miss – saying there was a serious risk of collision. Flight tracker records show the airliner was a BA flight from Stockholm, Sweden, to Heathrow.
The report added:
‘In the Board’s opinion the description of the object was sufficient to indicate that it was a drone.The Board considered that the pilot’s overall account of the incident portrayed a situation where providence had played a major part in the incident and/or a definite risk of collision had existed.’
Drones are normally restricted from flying higher than 400 ft or out of sight of the operator, and it is a criminal offence to fly anywhere near an aircraft.
Operators breaking the rules by flying close to a plane can potentially be convicted of endangering an aircraft which carries a maximum jail sentence of five years.
A spokesperson for British Airways said:
‘We take such matters extremely seriously and our pilots report incidents so that the authorities can investigate and take appropriate action.’
The incident follows a series of other reported near misses between drones and passenger aircraft in UK airspace. It is believed that most cases involve rogue operators flying their devices to illegal heights to try and get dramatic videos of aircraft flying by.
Pilots have repeatedly warned of the danger of small drones smashing cockpit windows or potentially damaging jet engines, especially during critical times when aircraft are coming in to land or have just taken off.
Top Photo: File photo of a drone with a BA plane landing at Heathrow in the background.
Middle image: (C) East Anglia News Service
Source: Daily Mail