near miss

Extending a recent series of media stories about close-call aircraft-UAV incidents that’ve been heavy on fear-generating speculation and lighter on supporting facts, a UK daily has raised alarms with its account of a Royal Air Force (RAF) jet used by VIP passengers that “came within 30ft of smashing into an illegally flown drone” – reasons for seriously questioning the threatening object identified by crew notwithstanding.

Few incidents are better generators of headlines, public shivers, and the ire of UAV sector experts than reports of “near misses” between drones and piloted aircraft – encounters whose very definitions and delineations are often left to the subjective dread of the beholder. A recently released study, however, uses objective methods for analyzing such mid-air events, and offers suggestions for further reducing their relatively limited numbers.

A UK drone pilot has been slapped with a hefty fine and a suspended prison sentence for having flown his UAV during a historic airshow event last July, during which it came dangerously close to a rare World War II-era Royal Air Force plane as it passed.