Lufthansa flight has near-miss with drone near Warsaw | Hacker News Reader

Lufthansa flight has near-miss with drone near Warsaw

uk.reuters.com

53 pointsmuddyrivers77 comments

Remember the Penny Arcade comic where "normal person + anonymity + audience = total fuckwad" [1]? I think what we have here is "normal person + anonymity + airplane = airspace incursions".

[1] http://www.penny-arcade.com/S=0/comic/2004/03/19

Drones take away the risk of consequences for your actions. It's kind of like bicycle/car accidents. Driver hits a bicyclist. Bicyclist leaves the scene of the accident in a body bag. Driver drives away with some scratches on the car. With that kind of outcome, there isn't much incentive for the driver to drive safer -- his ass is not on the line.

Drones are the same way. Crash your drone into an aircraft and kill 300 people you've never heard of? Oh well, you just walk away. Much easier than learning the rules for navigating controlled airspace.

There are also very few regulations on drones, and there are no licenses/permits required to learn the rules in order to fly them.

https://www.faa.gov/uas/model_aircraft/

The same goes for bicycles being used on roadways. No education, licensing, etc (at least in the U.S.).

Do any countries have licensing for biclysists?

You can't compare the regulations/education on cars to those on airplanes, just like you can't compare the regulations/education on bikes to drones.

Airspace is not a road way, it can't be compared to one.

I'm specifically talking about the USA (Hence FAA regulations) but this does affect every country.

Edit: added /education

It's funny that you say that now after agreeing with, and adding to the comparison of drones = cars and planes = bicycles. Now when someone flips the comparison, equating drones to bicycles, the comparison is apples to oranges?

He was comparing the anonymity and risk factors.

You were looking at regulations, which doesn't really work. Drones/Airplanes and Bikes/Cars are two different beasts. If you wanted a real comparison, look at driving an automated empty car on the road and a car on the road. That would be an apt comparison.

There's something about drones that seems to engender this - it's like people think the word 'drone' means 'thing which is outside the normal scope of consequences'. Like, for example, people are actually shooting other people's drones down[1]. And when Amazon talk about using drones for delivery, the first response in any discussion is "what's to stop people stealing the drones?"

You're right, drones are like the internet of the sky.

[1] http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2015/06/29/court_rul...

I wonder where people could have gotten it into their minds that "drones" operate above the law, or that their operators can kill whomever they please without consequence.

I wonder why "drones" have recently gained so much mindshare.

It is true that autonomous drones are a new thing. But 90% of the reporting I see on "drones" is about small radio-controlled aircraft, which have been around since well before the computer.

Is it just that the possibility of a "smart" drone is drawing attention to the other kind, as well? Or is there something specifically about quadcopters that captures the public imagination?

Traditional RC aircraft are extremely niche. They're expensive and hard to fly, so you need some dedication to get into that.

Quadcopters, on the other hand, can be purchased for $40 and flown by somebody with no experience. Obviously a $40 quadcopter won't be threatening airliners, but it's representative of a big change all over the spectrum.

A large part of it is their ability to keep themselves stable. That opens up a huge range of uses that weren't there previously, as well as reducing the chance you'll break it the first time out flying it.

I was thinking about this recently; seems like affordable consumer quadcopters are a consequence of the availability of cheap, lightweight solid-state accelerometers. Why are accelerometer chips cheap? Because they're ubiquitous in phones. Why are they ubiquitous in phones? Because Steve Jobs wanted the original iPhone to be able to tell which way up you were holding it.

(also, due credit to laptop hard drive 'freefall sensors' as another contributor).

Combine that with the cheap lithium battery and digital radio communication chipsets, also driven by phone volumes, and that's why 'radio controlled helicopters' are no longer a niche hobby, and instead a danger to aviation.

Chris Anderson talks a lot about the smartphone-drone connection here: "How I Accidentally Kickstarted the Domestic Drone Boom" http://www.wired.com/2012/06/ff_drones/

Don't forget the ultimate technological crosstie here: Using the phone as a controller for the drone.

The ease-of-use of these modern "radio-controlled aircraft" is unprecedented - vertical takeoff, live video, intuitive controls - making them much more pervasive than ever before. That's why they're getting more mindshare - AND getting into more trouble.

Quadcopters with a GoPro attached are useful in a way that r/c planes never were.

I flew RC planes in the late 80s when I was around 14. There was a barrier to entry back then. It wasn't money, although that was part of it. You generally had to build the planes (much more involved than assembling a ready-to-go drone), and then learn how to fly them. The were not easy to fly like the current drones are. Part of the training we got was not to do stupid stuff like fly around airports. Those barriers to entry are gone, so now you plop down $1000 or less, and a day later you're up and flying.

Because quadcopters are very easy to fly compared to either fixed-wing RC planes or RC helicopters with the traditional rotor arrangement, and the price of the technology has been in free-fall. And quadcopters are a relatively new thing; Affordable ones have only been on the market for a few years.

It's because they're more popular now. That's it.

A $500 dollar drone (or a $200 home built arduinopilot drone) can follow a GPS flight path and return to a fixed point with no input from a pilot. They are autonomous.

This article needs to be more specific about what they mean by "drone". I thought this meant a military drone until about halfway through the article, and I only inferred that it was talking about a quadcopter or hobby RC/UAV plane from context.

Pro tip: Whenever you read "drone" in a news article you can almost always safely replace it with "unmanned aerial vehicle" with no loss of information. Journalists currently do not make the distinction between (semi-)autonomous military "drones" and hobbyist "drones".

Does anyone make that distinction in a reliable or consistent way?

> Pro tip: Whenever you read "drone" in a news article you can almost always safely replace it with "unmanned aerial vehicle" with no loss of information.

I don't think that replacement _adds_ any additional information, though. As someone who doesn't follow drone/UAV stuff too closely, your suggested substitution does not really clarify the identity of the subject for me.

Yeah, the article never does specify what type or size of aircraft was involved. The mention of commercial drones for aerial photography makes me assume they're talking about a small remotely-piloted multirotor, but it's not even clear if the article's author knows what type of aircraft was involved in this incident.

Police caught the guy. Probably. He admited to fly his drone in that region at the time, but had no idea he was so close to the airport.

The uav has gps and logs position and time, so they will know for sure eventually. It's illegal to operate drones there, the guy can go to prison for up to 8 years.

Source (in Polish) http://www.rmf24.pl/fakty/news-incydent-z-dronem-zatrzymano-...

Do drones really pose that large of a threat to a commercial aircraft?

Yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird_strike

Bird strikes have taken down commercial aircraft, so I would guess that yes drones are a threat

If a bird strike can do this [1], I don't see why a drone could be any "better" for an aircraft to hit.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Airways_Flight_1549

That's a whole flock of birds though.

It only really takes one to whack an engine. The "flock" bit was particularly interesting there because it got both engines at once. A single drone would presumably only take out a single engine. The airplane would likely survive the encounter, since they're built to survive an engine failure. But it would still do a hefty amount of damage (I bet the drone owner doesn't want to be on the hook for the cost of a new engine!) and survival, while likely, is far from guaranteed in the event of a single engine failure.

The fact that people need to be convinced to keep drones away from planes is a little disconcerting. People just aren't going to be convinced until there's an accident. I wrote the apology a couple days ago. Bookmark it:

https://h4labs.wordpress.com/2015/07/19/dangerous-drones-dai...

We're discussing it again 2 days later as the #1 HN story. Has everyone seen Groundhog Day?

A whole "flock" of drones is not hard to imagine.

Try birds, for starters.

They can. From what I've read the real problem is much like birds. If they get sucked into the jet engine then they can do a huge amount of damage. More than a bird even because of the fact that you've usually got a good bit of metal and a lithium battery or two. That's enough to take out the engine just like a bird but with the lithium battery that's going to get splattered around there's an increased chance of fire starting that could make even losing one engine a really bad prospect. Combine that with the fact that the plane is likely to be at a low altitude and it's unlikely that the plane will be able to glide somewhere it can safely crash land at either an airport or long stretch of road.

> More than a bird even

A lithium battery is going to get chopped up and spit out the rear of the engine - if it manages to get in the intake to begin with, which is a huge if. There's ZERO chance any of that lithium would stick around long enough to cause a 'fire', whatever that means. It's not called a 'jet' engine for nothing.

How much experience do you have with the lithium polymer batteries commonly used on hobbyist drones?

I've been flying for a little over a year now and personally seen some pretty gnarly LiPo failures in that time.

I would _not_ want to be flying on a plane with one of those hitting the turbines. Would you?

I think the worst thing is not the fire, but what happens if the wiring gets gummed up on some blades and unbalances the engine. These things turn at a crazy number of RPM, so even a small amount of weight off-balance could cause them to vibrate and self-destruct catastrophically if it hit the right harmonic.

Given the speeds I'm not even sure it'd take that. The debris being sucked in I think would be enough to break/bend a blade or two which would unbalance it just as easily. Making even more debris for the rest of the engine.

Those blades are crazy tough and the battery is the least of your worries when ingesting a drone. I'd be more concerned about the motors doing the damage to the blades.

Howdy! I've been flying all sorts of R/C for 25 years, so quite a bit of experience. Had them splode/catch on fire occasionally. Jet engines are quite a bit bigger than said batteries and the flows through them are sufficient to exhaust most, if not all, of the battery out the ass end before the lithium could experience thermal runaway (which is what li-ion fires are).

Given that a big part of a jet engine is that there's a large series of rotors to perform the compression of the air intake as it streams in[1], and then constricts the space to get even higher compression before the combustion chamber there's a good chance of things getting stuck once the primary rotor has been damaged by something going into it. That's the primary way that birds and other debris disable a single engine. They don't usually cause a fire because they're not likely to combust/explode on being punctured or torn[2].

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4c/Jet_engi... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhJf9pJ6gOk ; many more just look for lipo explode

Wonder if we should create an FAQ for drone questions? It's only been two days since the last HN discussion:

https://h4labs.wordpress.com/2015/07/19/dangerous-drones-dai...

It is a criminal offence to operate any flying device in a controlled airspace in Europe without prior authorization from the appropriate air space control (EASA regulations). It does not really matter whether it is a Cessna, a paraglide, a Chinese lantern, or a UAV drone. I bet a similar law is in effect in the US.

The responsible guy will probably avoid jail, but will surely be convicted.

Yes. Here are some examples:

1. they distract the pilot during the most critical phase of flight

2. In an airport environment, planes are closer to each other than elsewhere in space, so if a pilot has to suddenly deviate to miss a drone, he might hit another plane

3. If a drone gets in the way of one side of a LOC or a GS signal, it might mess up the plane's ILS approach, possibly causing it to crash. Birds (being radio-transparent) do not.

Yes, compared with what a bird can do. This is what a single bird (vulture) did in to a a small airplane in Brazil recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICbWN3XTcig (strong images). This was what another bird did to a large airplane a few years ago also in Brazil: http://g1.globo.com/rio-de-janeiro/noticia/2013/08/aviao-da-... (article in pt-br).

Just like laser pointers in cockpit - find the culprits and charge them with $MANY counts of reckless endangerment. This endangers the lives of every passenger and lots of people on the ground!

Engines on planes are made to chuck a flock of birds without exploding, i think the plane would have been "fine" (aka no human casualties) even if it did hit the drone.

Assuming it was a quad-copter not an actual military drone.

Speaking of which, why do we keep calling hobbyist quadcopters and such "drones"? Using the same word for unmanned military bombers and (relatively) harmless toys seems a bit counter-productive.

Same reason my 550lb glider and a 100-ton B-52 are both "airplanes." It's a general word that encompasses a lot.

The problem isn't so much the use of the word "drones" but the lack of any further qualifiers on it. Sometimes it's evident from context (an article about military drone strikes isn't talking about a 2lb quadcopter, for example) but sometimes it's not, and I think writers need to be a little more careful with it.

The word "drone" means an aircraft without a pilot. That's been the case since militaries began testing anti-aircraft weaponry with unmanned aircraft, around World War II. The reason it is used specifically for small RC multirotors (as opposed to RC fixed wing planes or single-rotor helicopters) is that more specific terms like "multirotor" or "quadcopter" are less well-known.

Birds do not come with exploding lithium batteries or large metal bodies like brushless outrunner engines do!

I do not think you understand how tight the tolerances are in a modern turbofan engine. Birds are relatively soft and get chopped up by the blades. Metal bits (like a drone will have) can break off or bend a blade. The imbalance of a broken blade will cause damage to the turbine instantly, which will cascade into further damage. (clearances are MILLIMETERS, if that, so any bending is a serious issue)

I hope they're testing vs. drones today for current aircraft. The old turkey cannon test isn't enough.

There are limits on what turbine blades can handle. Stronger blades are thicker. Thicker blades are heavier and harder to spin up. As it is, the insides of those turbofans are the bleeding edge of material science!

Contained engine failure is not really a good outcome on final approach.

Modern planes are designed to be resilient to bird strikes, but they aren't impervious, and a risk to safety will exists. Generally, when it comes to birds we just try to mitigate by reducing incidence rate (keeping birds away from airports), harden the planes, and then accept the residual rate.

With human caused issues, it's somewhat different since we do actually have more control of the situation. Or at least potential control.

The one instance that comes to mind of an airliner encountering an entire flock of birds, both engines were destroyed and they made a rather spectacular landing in the Hudson river.

Airliners are made to withstand bird strikes, but that doesn't mean they escape with no damage. I agree that there probably would have been no casualties if the plane had hit this drone, but it's not exactly a guarantee. It could have easily taken out an engine, and then a mistake or further equipment failure while handling the emergency could have caused a crash. The odds are good that everyone would be fine, but we're talking something like a mere 99.9% chance that everything would be fine (minus a couple million dollars to fix the engine), rather than the one-in-a-billion odds we're accustomed to seeing for air travel.

Tell that to US Air 1549...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Airways_Flight_1549

Birds are still extremely dangerous to airplanes so it's clear that drones (or quadcopters or whatever you want to call them) which are typically larger, heavier, and much more dense will pose issues too.

Is it possible to get a description of the drone ? It's size, behaviour, speed, etc.

I was very surprised to learn that the "drone" seen above nuclear power plants in France has been discribed by a witness as to be ~7 meter in diameter, flowing at an altitude of ~200 meter, at slow speed and silently.

There are firms that build them specifically for industrial inspection purposes, eg Blue Bear Research Systems in the UK. Unless the witness was qualified (eg a pilot or surveyor or similar) I would take size/height estimates with a giant pinch of salt, most people are awful at estimating those things.

Couple months ago, I was looking out the window on approach to LAX and spotted a metallic helium balloon, maybe 200-400 meters past the end of the wing. As far as I can tell it was not a threat, and I've not been able to find an instance of one causing engine problems, but it was a bit unnerving.

I've spotted a few balloons at altitude while flying. Once I saw a red and blue balloon tangled together which had somehow got to spinning. From a distance it looked like a strobing light. Neat effect.

Anyway, I definitely wouldn't worry about those. They'll shred to pieces before they cause any damage. A couple of pounds of heavier-than-air drone hardware is a different matter.

By the way, although 100 meters may sound like a comfortable margin bear in mind that at 100 knots (just around stall speed for a small jet coming in to land) that distance will be closed in under 2 seconds.

So did they hit?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDKdvTecYAM

came here to say this.

Oh shit, the contagion is spreading.

"Near miss" means "a miss which was near." It does not mean "nearly missed." It's not an incorrect phrase, it's not a contradiction, and the only thing that's silly about the phrase is how people keep on pointing this out.

(Carlin makes it funny, I must admit. But you're not him.)

This is strange, in my country you are forbidden by law to fly a drone near an airport (which I find as an appropriate law).

Just because something is illegal doesn't mean nobody will do it.

It is forbidden, they caught him, guy says he didn't knew he flew so close. Faces up to 8 years in prison.

How can a commercial drone take down a plane? Isn't that sensationalism?

Exactly how lasers and birds can take down planes: very rarely.

I'm sure that answer would be of no comfort to anyone whose plane's turbine got struck by someone's toy though.

Moderate sized birds can take down airplanes and helicopters and have done so in the very recent past. Why is everyone so loathe to admit that flying these near aircraft is insanely dangerous?

I personally think it's an over-reaction to the over-reaction to 9/11.

We were presented with, "Terrorism is unbelievably dangerous! The slightest provocation can take down an airliner. We're all gonna die unless we take extreme measures!"

A lot of people pushed back so hard the other way that they got to, "Air travel is totally safe no matter what and there is never any danger from anything."

For someone without much domain knowledge, "We need to keep drones away from airports so an airliner doesn't get brought down in a collision" probably sounds about the same as "We need to ban all liquids in containers larger than 3.3oz, unless it's contact lens solution in which case it's totally cool."

Things flying into the engines of operating aircraft, especially during take-off and landing, is an extreme hazard that has been documented in many, many cases. Anything airborne poses a serious hazard to aircraft, even tiny particles of ash.

This is nothing at all like the threat posed by liquids. That's a response to binary explosives and is misguided at best. Powder mixtures can do just as much damage and they don't screen for those at all.

Yes, I know. I'm explaining why I think people might believe they're similar, not trying to actually say that they are similar.

It's all sort of irrelevant anyways, since if you wanted to kill a bunch of people, you could just suicide bomb the giant line of people that now forms due to all of these "security" procedures.

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