Summary
- Near-miss with drone on British Airways flight because it narrowly avoids collision over UK airspace.
- Drone flew far above legal limit at 9,500ft, and the operator has not been tracked down.
- Incident labeled as Category A risk by Airprox.
A British Airways flight reportedly got here inside 5ft of a drone, narrowly avoiding a possible disaster. The Airbus A321 was flying from Athens to London Heathrow in January when it encountered the drone over the skies of Kent, UK.
BA Airbus A321 narrowly misses drone
As first reported by Every day Mail, the A321 could have carried as much as 180 passengers onboard in the course of the incident. At around 16:25 GMT on January 3, 2024, the flight was approaching BIG VOR (Biggin Hill VOR station) near the town of Sevenoaks, Kent, when pilots “became aware of an object barely to the fitting of the nose” which was closing distance with the aircraft. The near-miss occurred at an altitude of around 9,500ft because the British Airways flight – traveling at a speed of over 250 mph – entered a holding pattern before its final approach to London Heathrow Airport (LHR).
Photo: Jag_cz | Shutterstock
Within the UK, the utmost legal height for a drone is 400ft, and this limit is programmed into commercially available drones. Nevertheless, the software may be hacked, which enables far higher altitudes equivalent to this near-miss, which occurred over 24 times the legal limit. It is not clear why someone was operating a drone at this height, but it surely might have been to capture footage of the plane.
CAA Reiterates UK Drone Laws Following Near Miss With RAF Hurricane
The CAA has reminded the general public of ordinary drone regulations after a drone nearly collided with a low-flying RAF plane.
Easy Flying has reported on several drone near-misses through the years – fortunately, none of those have led to a serious accident, although collisions with business aircraft have happened. One such collision occurred when an Emirates Airbus A380 was landing in Nice and a drone struck its right wing, causing extensive damage to the aircraft but no injuries onboard.
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