Drone Safety, Drone Security and Mystery Drones - October/November Drone News Round Up

Wow it’s been a busy month for Drones. It all kicked off on 14th October when a Drone was flown over a football match. The Euro 2016 qualifying match was between Albania and Serbia in Belgrade. The drone carried a flag with the insignia of “Greater Albania”. The flag was eventually pulled down but this sparked a brawl between the teams and even fans. Riot police were bought in to bring things under control.

Next up on the 23rd October the attention of the press focused on some stunning (but highly illegal) youtube footage over football grounds, crowded streets and fairs in London, Nottingham and Liverpool. The footage blatently shows a drone being flown close to people and property in congested areas, something that the laws of the UK Air Navigation Order Article 166 and 167 do not allow without explicit permission from the CAA.

Then probably the most serious of incidents hit the public domain on 26th October through the UK Airprox Board. A drone was spotted by an aircraft at approx. 1500ft on the approach to Southend Airport. The reporter suggests the drone came within feet of the aircraft. Flying drones out of line of sight sufficient to avoid obstacles and other aircraft also contravenes the ANO.

Finally, on the 30th October in France a simultaneous and apparently planned set of drone flights occurred across multiple nuclear facilities. Another highly illegal operation according the French Aviation Authority. This led to fears that more than just cameras can be attached to these drones, such as explosives! However these were quickly dismissed by experts stating that nuclear facilities are designed to withstand impacts from airliners thus a small drone is not a risk.

Closer to home, recently the UK House of Lords have been gathering evidence in a consultation with industry experts with regards to EU legislation of drones.

So why the bad press? Well some of it probably a lack of understanding about the types of drones that exist. For example during the House of Lords evidence giving, it was mentioned that there was a need for safeguards for small Drones, such a geo-fencing (this is something employed by the DJI Phantom which uses GPS coordinates to prevent them from being flown around airports) but much of the rest of the evidence given was about large drones, cargo drones and potentially passenger drones but very little about small recreational drones. So the article here is quite misleading when it shows a small drone picture for an article which is largely about large drones.

However, not all is bad. Some of the articles from the BBC this month do well to highlight and educate the general public about the dangers of operating drones. Operating a drone in a crowded football match could have left someone seriously hurt. It doesn’t take a full pre flight risk assessment to identify some of the hazards there. Mobile Phone interference, Wifi Signals, RF Interference, GPS Loss/Interference, Magnetic Interference, Localised Winds just to name a few. Here at Hampshire Aerial Photos we have permission from the CAA to operate in these congested areas. This permission relies on us following a strict operations manual to achieve a safe operating environment at all times. We employ a number of safety procedures and mitigations such as door-to-door consultation, cordons, prop guard and additional ground crew to ensure all the risks of operating in those environments are minimised.