A commercial passenger flight carrying 180 people was involved in a mid-air near-miss with a drone, according to an aviation safety report to an investigative board picked up on by British news outlets.
Serious risk of collision
The incident, classed as “Category A” or “serious risk of collision” by the UK Airprox Board, occurred on January 3 2023, when British Airways Airbus A321 was about to begin queuing to come in to land in the Heathrow Airport holding stack above Sevenoaks in Kent.
With the plane travelling at 403 km/h (250 mph) and flying at an altitude of over 3,000 metres (10,000 feet), an “extremely close” object “shot down [its] right-hand side”, the pilot said.
The report drew on radar data analysis by a safety investigations unit. It specified that the object came as close as 1.5 metres (5 feet) to the Airbus A321’s wing and was just over nine metres (30 feet) from the cockpit.
“Distinctive shape of a drone”
The report described the pilots becoming “aware of an object slightly to the right of the nose at same level on a constant bearing with closing distance. It was small but had the distinctive shape of a drone.”
The UK’s Civil Aviation authority imposes restriction zones (FRZ) near airfields, airports, spaceports, where drone operation is strictly limited. What’s more, if the object was a drone, which the report said there was “sufficient indication” to suppose, it should have been flying no higher than 122 metres (400 feet), the legal maximum for flying a drone in the United Kingdom.
Endangering an aircraft
Many drones are technically limited by their operating systems to prevent them flying above the legal threshold, but it is possible for users to override these settings with software patches and to equip drones with more powerful battery packs.
The drone in question was flying 24 times as high as the legal limit. It has been speculated that the operator was trying to capture images of the jet. The activity could have had terrible consequences if the drone had come into contact with the aircraft, especially with the windscreen, or had it been pulled into an engine.
A British Airways representative told The Independent the airline takes “such matters extremely seriously and our pilots report incidents so that the authorities can investigate and take appropriate action.”
The fate of the tour operator is not in the public domain but the penalty for endangering an aircraft is up to five years in prison.
