Washington – A commercial aircraft at San Francisco’s International Airport in November was towards the final procedure when the Crew Cockpit found a drone outside the window. At that moment it was too late to “take upset”, “the pilots said and the quadcopter was not 300 feet away from their windshield.
A month ago, a Jetliner was flying at a height of 5 feet near the International Airport in Miami when its pilots reported a “close face” with a drone. In August, the left branch of a passenger jet came as a drone of 50 feet of clipping.
According to aviation protection experts, all of these events were classified as “nearest middle conflict” – which could have the catastrophic consequences of any one. They were not isolated encounters.
An associated press analysis of the airline protection database revealed that last year drones were about two-thirds of the report near the media collision involved in the landing and landing at the top 30 busiest airports in the country. The airline traffic was reduced during the Covid -19 epidemic when it was the highest percentage of these nearest misses since 2021.
AP has been found, the first missed reports of the nearby Miss involved with the drones in the 21st were logged. The next year, the number of face -to -face numbers spread. According to the AP analysis, in the last decade, drones have been reported to Miss around 51% – 122 in 240.
A January clash between a military helicopter and a commercial jet near Washington DC was clarified by January collision – as the airports were at risk – passenger jets had long been at risk around the airports, which killed 67 people.
The use of quadcopters and remote-Controld planes exploded in popularity as the threat to the drone has become more intense over the past decade. The FAA estimates that Americans are operating more than a million drones for recreational and commercial purposes.
“If you have money, you can go to the Internet and buy a beautiful sophisticated drone that can reach the height, they have no business,” said William Waldoc, a Professor of Protection Science at Embry-Ridol Aeronautical University.
The risk is the most intense of the airports because it is the most overlap of drones and aircraft aircraft, experts say.
The events presents only a portion of these close calls because the database – NASA airline security reports – depending on the submission of voluntary submission of pilots and other aviation staff. A separate FAA program, which includes public reports, has at least 160 spectacles of flying drones near the airports last month.
“The FAA recognizes this instability and we all know that additional changes need to be made to identify and mitigate the airports,” Hanna Thach, executive director of partnership known as the UAS system as a coalition through research superiority, said.
The FAA says they have taken steps to reduce the risk of drones. It has banned almost all drones flying around the airports without prior approval, though these national rules are difficult to enforce, and recreational users may not be aware of restrictions.
The agency requires articles for drones weighing 250 grams (0.55 pounds), and a radio transponder need to carry a radio transponder that identifies the owner of the drone and broadcast its location to help avoid collision. Additional rules manage the use of commercial drones.
The company is also examining systems to identify and counter -observance drones near the airports. Among the methods that are being tested: Jam drones are forced to use radio signals or landing them. Authorities are also weighing whether high-power microwave or laser beam should be installed to disable machines.
Experts say the FAA and other authorities can do more. They suggested creating a system similar to the speed camera on the roadways that could capture a drone transponder code and send tickets to its pilots.
They also say that the FAA rules should be considered in which all manufacturers need to be programmed to prevent airport and other sensitive zones for a drone GPS unit program, this is a method called “Geofening”.
The top drone manufacturer DJI uses this national geography for years. However, it removes the feature in January, when it reaches the restricted areas, the drone replaces it with caution to pilots.
Adam Welsh, head of DJI’s Global Policy, said that handling the request for temporarily disable geofnsing from authorized users has become increasingly time -consuming task. Last year, more than one million requests were processed.
Welsh said, “We had about twenty -four hours of service, but it was really difficult to handle the applications that arrived,” said Walesh. “All of them had to be reviewed individually.”
He said no other manufacturers were able to do not enable Geofnsing and no need to do it without government rules, DJI decided to finish the practice, he said.
The FAA refused to say whether it was considering whether it was considering the order of geofnsing.
Experts say that the authorities should take more aggressive steps to account for the limited airspace violation of drone users – to highlight the problem and prevent others from breaching the rules, pointing to recent arrests that they could send this national message.
For example, in December, the Boston police arrested two people who operated a drone that flew dangerously near Logan International Airport. Police said they were able to find drone flyers in some parts by tracking the aircraft for the FAA-driven transponder signal.
A month later, a small drone collided with a “super scoop” aircraft that was struggling to spread the flames scattered in southern California. The drone dug a hole in the left wing of the aircraft, which was sufficiently damaged that officers were based on repairing the aircraft for several days.
Authorities found a 56 -year -old drone operator who was convicted of a federal allegation for recklessly flying his aircraft. According to the court record, the FAA’s flying in that region is limited to flying, he admitted that he launched his DJI quadcopter to monitor the fire at the Pacific Polysades neighborhood. It lost the drone after the operator flying about 1.5 miles from where the operator launched. And it was then that the “super scooper” hit.
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