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Drone unlikely to have hit BA plane near Heathrow, government says

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Drone unlikely to have hit BA plane near Heathrow, government says

#31

Post by patcheudor »

cm3 wrote: post #2

So, will the truth be known widely or will the broader population remember only the drone accusation? Cynic in me thinks this was deliberately suggested to make passing some drone laws easier.

I have a lot of mixed feelings about multi-rotor and hobby aircraft regulation. Part of me looks at all the idiots out there and goes: "okay, that's fair." But then it impacts responsible flyers and isn't consistent with some existing case law and even the US Constitution. In my state they've enacted a law that makes it illegal to film, then post video on YouTube from a multi-rotor and have all but made it illegal to fly them over private property without permission. Meanwhile, balloons! Balloonists can do whatever they want and no one is calling them out on the crazy irresponsible stuff they do. In fact, court cases dating back nearly 200 years supports their use of the air for all purposes. Yes, you might go "ha, ha", Patch is a funny guy, irresponsible balloonists, right!" but I'm serious. On April 17th of just this year we had a balloonist come quite literally inches away from hitting our neighbors house. Do you think anyone at the FAA even cared? Do you think it made the news? Nope. Below is a photo I snapped of the incident as I ran out the door to what I thought was going to be a pretty nasty ballooning accident.

Throughout the centuries, owning a balloon has been something for the rich, for people who could afford good lawyers and build case law that favors nearly unrestricted flight by way of comparison to drone 'rules' being enacted. The problem with multi-rotors, is that any idiot without a lot of money can buy one, do something stupid, then be at the mercy of a public defender when they go to court. Since there are literally millions of people out there who can afford a multi-rotor but can't afford to defend themselves in court, the future isn't bright when it comes to being able to step out your door and fly a multi-rotor.

https://scontent-sea1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xfp1/v/t1.0-9/1...

Re: Drone unlikely to have hit BA plane near Heathrow, government says

#32

Post by Lawtonfogle »

spatulan wrote: post #4
cm3 wrote: post #2

So, will the truth be known widely or will the broader population remember only the drone accusation? Cynic in me thinks this was deliberately suggested to make passing some drone laws easier.

That's more conspiracy theorist, than cynic.

>conspiracy theorist

My favorite conspiracy theory is that the idea of conspiracy theories was subject to a multiple decade long attack by certain government groups to make conspiracy theory equate in popular culture to crack pot theory. Governments benefits when theories like the CIA bringing in drugs or the military doing non-consensual human experimentation on soldiers are classified under the same moniker as the theory that lizard people control the government and aliens exist but the governments of the world cover for them.

But that is just a conspiracy theory.

Re: Drone unlikely to have hit BA plane near Heathrow, government says

#33

Post by pessimizer »

cm3 wrote: post #2

So, will the truth be known widely or will the broader population remember only the drone accusation? Cynic in me thinks this was deliberately suggested to make passing some drone laws easier.

Everybody still thinks that Apple gathered a ton of gold while recycling iPhones. You'll be hearing about it in bars for 10 years. What scrupulous recyclers they are! iDevices are probably good for the environment.

The only reason hobby helicopters are called "drones" now is because the U.S. uses drones to kill people, and people had a problem with that - so now everything is a drone. I guess the next step is to ban hobby helicopters, closing the circle.

Re: Drone unlikely to have hit BA plane near Heathrow, government says

#35

Post by cm3 »

jblok wrote: post #18
cm3 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's that people will only remember the sensationalist news. That's why it must be a requirement to only report what is factually proven or otherwise just say "planed had to land, reason unknown".

That's a problem with people and their memory, not the news outlet. The headline at the moment literally says it was unlikely to be a drone, but that still doesn't rule it out completely. Following your rules, that wouldn't make it as a story because it isn't factually proven.

News should not report stuff they don't know is true. Otherwise it's just reddit on TV and we wouldn't need the profession called journalism.

Re: Drone unlikely to have hit BA plane near Heathrow, government says

#36

Post by jessriedel »

coldcode wrote: post #23

Planes are hit by drones all the time especially while landing and taking off. Of course they are called birds. Suck a few geese into your engines and you have to land in a river. I doubt a drone is as dangerous as a goose at 200 knots.

Yes, and the damage from birds is large: "Experts say bird strikes...cause an estimated $600 million a year in damage to planes."

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/birds-plane-crashes-arti...

The cost of a single downed passenger plane is ~$1B, while the entire yearly value of the drone market is $50M.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11425782

Even their usage/value of drones were kept fixed, then it could make sense to ban them even if drones only cause one airplane crash per decade. Obviously, this argument fails when you consider future value, but the point is that the numbers are not intuitive.

Re: Drone unlikely to have hit BA plane near Heathrow, government says

#37

Post by shkkmo »

_puk wrote: post #20
HoopleHead wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Came here to say pretty much the same thing. It's a familiar old pattern: 1: "Thing" is developed which enjoys benign use amongst small subset of geeks 2: Military discover "Thing" and develop a way to use it for evil and/or killing 3: "Thing" gains in popularity amongst general public 4: Government says. "General public can't be trusted with "Thing". Thing is capable of doing evil and/or killing people!" 5: News sto…

... warns "expert" My issue with these stories, is that there generally is no go-to organisation for the new "Thing", so all the news articles end up quoting 'Jim , the self proclaimed expert on Thing"'

So... what would you call the AMA (http://www.modelaircraft.org/), these stories are generally just examples of shoddy journalism.

Re: Drone unlikely to have hit BA plane near Heathrow, government says

#38

Post by cm3 »

diginux wrote: post #17
cm3 wrote: post #2

So, will the truth be known widely or will the broader population remember only the drone accusation? Cynic in me thinks this was deliberately suggested to make passing some drone laws easier.

The response from their Transport Minister 7 days ago seems fairly sane to me: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/21/drone-believed-to...

Again, the problem is the initial unfounded reporting. This is why people who have been accused of heinous crimes without proof or conclusive investigation, because the town people were looking for an easy to identify perpetrator, have a hard time later being treated the same as before the accusation. It's what stays in the minds of most people that's the harm.

Re: Drone unlikely to have hit BA plane near Heathrow, government says

#39

Post by harryh »

TillE wrote: post #25

You changed the title to something that is simply not true. Please don't do that. "Air accident investigators said they had not ruled out a drone but had no evidence to support the suggestion."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_hypothesis

Re: Drone unlikely to have hit BA plane near Heathrow, government says

#40

Post by phicoh »

tremon wrote: post #9

So, if it was confirmed this wasn't a drone, why is the BBC still including a list of drone near-misses? Do they still believe they have a point to make, or are they just making excuses? Furthermore, the other drone incidents involve airplanes at 2000, 2800 and 4000 feet. Those are not hobby drones. Only one of those listed might have been an amateur drone, at 30ft.

Not sure what you call hobby drones. My guess is that with the more expensive hobby quadcopters it should be easy to get way to close to landing planes at 2000 feet. Basically at a busy airport you will have one plane every few minutes taking roughly the same path. So flying close to that path, for example to make video recordings of the landing planes will eventually result in a near miss.
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