Again we see people flying recklessly. After seeing so many crashing or getting in trouble due to their lack of common sense, Should DJI and other drone companies start doing a minimum intelligence and common sense test to customers before allowing them to buy a Drone? This is one of the reasons that is killing the hobby.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/mar/31/drone-wingspan-plane-approaching-heathrow-near-misses

Can't agree more. Unfortunately it will end up causing the rules to become so onerous that the only drone fliers left will be the idiots.

With more bad reports and publicity like this, because of folks that insist on pushing the extreme limits in the wrong places, we will all soon be dealing with regulations like Canada, and/or limitations DJI and others will build into their systems preventing irresponsible flying.  Probably the same guy that points a class 3A green laser at planes without thinking of the consequences. Dumb!

Well... let's see what the outcome will be. What I personally would like to see is the first report titled "100 aircraft-drone collisions summarized" where the outcome is a lost drone and in 10% cases a scratch on the real aircraft and nothing more (so the remaining 90% even without a scratch). Maybe then we could get some sensible legislation, otherwise most likely not due to the police-state mentality. Oh well....

As usual the reports seem a little strange - a blue disc-like drone?
Heights way above normal operation in fact already not possible with most commercially available craft
Same applies to 'near airports'. So they seem to be calling for'more rules' when existing rules backed up by technical restriction are already in place.
The article and reports do not note this of course.

Why on earth would you want to fly a drone at 10,000 ft especially by an airport and how is this even possible.
This looks like a deliberate attempt to damage an aircraft and if its not I would treat it the same through the courts.

The Rev Posted at 2017-4-1 02:50
Why on earth would you want to fly a drone at 10,000 ft especially by an airport and how is this even possible.
This looks like a deliberate attempt to damage an aircraft and if its not I would treat it the same through the courts.

I'm in agreement with you that this act was deliberate --- a person that does things like this is a risk to the general public safety , a drone strike at 10,000 feet can cause some serious damage by puncturing the metal skin of the plane causing it to tare which in turn would weaken the structure --- Picture the drone hitting the wing while the plane is flying at hi speed ( 10,000 I believe they are at hi speed or coming out of it to land )
People like this need to be heavily FINED and put in JAIL no questions asked !!!!!!

It's that park near Heathrow (Stockley). I have seen sooo many incidents near Heathrow. They need to make the fine and add jail time for being caught flying at that park like 25,000 quid and a year injail.

Jenee 2 Posted at 2017-3-31 21:53
Can't agree more. Unfortunately it will end up causing the rules to become so onerous that the only drone fliers left will be the idiots.

It is always because of the idiots that the rest of the fair playing  or should I say, fair flying people  have to pay for these infractions. On the same token, surely it isn't a regular drone that was flying at 10000 feet? I mean how can a Mavic make it up there with the size of blades it has? Surely there would be a height were the air density would be insufficient for these tiny blades to keep the drone rising?

bigdps Posted at 2017-4-1 07:14
It is always because of the idiots that the rest of the fair playing  or should I say, fair flying people  have to pay for these infractions. On the same token, surely it isn't a regular drone that was flying at 10000 feet? I mean how can a Mavic make it up there with the size of blades it has? Surely there would be a height were the air density would be insufficient for these tiny blades to keep the drone rising?

I mean how can a Mavic make it up there with the size of blades it has?

The Mavic is reportedly capable of going higher than 10,000 feet, but this doesn't appear to have been a Mavic if it was even a drone at all (many of these articles turn out to be false alarms):

"They also noted that the 'blue and disc-like' craft appeared to be custom-made, rather than a commercially available model."

Exactly, these reports can never be confirmed and apparently pilots are very quick to 'see' drones in their airspace. I personally don't believe most if not all of them

I wonder how many of them are helium filled birthday balloons and what not? I think they are trying to find an escape goat and blame everything on us, the drone operators.