Lufthansa jet and drone nearly collide near LAX
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Re: Lufthansa jet and drone nearly collide near LAX
#2> at an elevation of 5,000 feet
That is not a hobby drone. I could never get mine to that height.
Re: Lufthansa jet and drone nearly collide near LAX
#3Just watch for a youtube upload with a "fuckin sick flyover footage of a jet, brah"
Re: Lufthansa jet and drone nearly collide near LAX
#4> at an elevation of 5,000 feet That is not a hobby drone. I could never get mine to that height.
Probably and hexa or octocopter:
Re: Lufthansa jet and drone nearly collide near LAX
#5Yesterday, 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.
Re: Lufthansa jet and drone nearly collide near LAX
#6> at an elevation of 5,000 feet That is not a hobby drone. I could never get mine to that height.
Phantom's can get quite high:
http://www.dnaindia.com/scitech/report-watch-a-stupid-drone-...
Re: Lufthansa jet and drone nearly collide near LAX
#7> at an elevation of 5,000 feet That is not a hobby drone. I could never get mine to that height.
There are videos of a Phantom 2 drone, which is under $500 used ($1300 new) reaching almost 11,000 feet.[1]
[1] http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/11000ft-dji-drone-flight-record-att...
Re: Lufthansa jet and drone nearly collide near LAX
#8Re: Lufthansa jet and drone nearly collide near LAX
#9This 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?
Re: Lufthansa jet and drone nearly collide near LAX
#10This 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?
Disclaimer: Aviation hobbyist but not an expert.
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.