How A Civilian Drone Can Shut Down An Entire Airport
Consumer drones are fun to play around with, it’s opened up a new avenue for people to explore and get some amazing shots of places. There are entire YouTube channels dedicated to cinematic shots of places done with drones. I myself have my eye on a DJI drone for Christmas I think I’m going to get myself.
But just owning a drone does not give you free range to fly it wherever you want. Last year the FAA made a big push to make more done rules and educate people on flying them. One of the absolute biggest things that you should never do with a drone is fly it near an airport. This can cause a huge safety risk if the drone happens to hit an aircraft. Not only can it cause thousands or even millions of dollars of damage but at that low of altitude if something catastrophic were to happen there’s a very low chance of recovery.
Airports and the FAA now need to be extremely cautious about any reports of drones flying near airports and in some instances if they’re spotted it will shut down the airport until the drone goes away or the drone pilot is found and talked to.
It should be common sense that you shouldn’t fly a drone near a large airplane but some people didn’t get that memo and have caused major incidents in the past, including one in New York where a drone hit and damaged a helicopter and an incident in the United Kingdom where it shut down operations at a busy airport when an airplane almost collided with it.
In the above video see just how bad operations can be halted if a drone is spotted in the area of a major airport. It’s definitely not wise to fly a drone anywhere near an airport and you could face criminal charges if you’re caught and have disrupted air traffic. It’s most likely a federal charge and not a local charge, so be careful.
