A320 narrowly missed drone over central London
A passenger plane flying over London narrowly missed colliding with a drone, according to a report out this week.
The A320 had 165 passengers on board as it was coming into land at Heathrow and was believed to have been withing 20 metres of the remote controlled flying object.
The pilot spotted the drone out of the cockpit window as the aircraft was flying over the Shard skyscraper in central London.
The UK Airprox Board, which specifically examines near misses in British airspace, said the plane was flying at 4,900ft.
Under aviation law, drones are not allowed to fly above 400ft and must be kept within the sight of the operator.
The Airprox Board classed the incident, which happened on July 18, as ‘category A’, the most serious of all the categories.
"Members agreed that this incident appeared to be a very near-miss and that the drone operator should not have been flying in that location at that altitude," it said.
"Acknowledging the difficulties in judging separation visually without external references, the Board considered that the pilot’s estimate of separation, allied to his overall account of the incident, portrayed a situation where a collision had only been narrowly avoided and chance had played a major part."
The operator of the drone could not be traced.
The Airprox report also cited another category A incident, this time at Liverpool Airport, when a pilot of an A319 reported seeing a large black and yellow drone about 5 metres from the wing tip.
A spokesman for the Civil Aviation Authority, which part funds the Airprox Board, said the number of drone incidents was on the rise despite efforts to raise awareness of the dangers.
In April a BA pilot said a drone had hit the A320 he was flying as it landed at Heathrow, but investigators later said it could have been a plastic bag.
In January, a flight was delayed at Heathrow after a drone thought to be a Christmas present was flown over one of its runways.
In August 2015 a drone was seen just 50 metres away from colliding with a passenger plane in a ‘possibly catastrophic’ near miss above London City Airport.
Bev
Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.
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