Some news stories must be made up...

[Rick]

Concorde was on my mind when I made my post. A small section of titanium that fell off an earlier inbound flight on the runway and ruptured the fuel tank on Concorde, with tragic consequences. The planes were grounded for a couple of years after significant safety improvements were made, only to fly in service for a few more years before the whole fleet was retired.
I imagine a twin engine jet could sustain flight with one engine after v2, but I'm no expert. Weather, fuel load and passenger levels would have a serious effect no doubt, but let's not put it to the test!

 

[RaidPW]

I've been reading up on the Concorde accident since posting that. I must admit that I thought the engine ingested part of the damaged tyre, rather than the debris impacting the wing and rupturing a fuel tank. Still, it was a solid object hitting part of an airframe, and look at the damage it caused.

It's the media attention to stories like this that is part of the problem. Major news outlets are happy to report on dangerous drone flying, vilifying the aircraft as much as the pillocks operating them, yet they use large quantities of drone footage during their regular reporting. Half of the footage of the flooding in the North West of England last year (I paid attention to coverage of this as I was one of those affected) was clearly obtained by hobby drone operators, but that fact was barely mentioned. The reason I brought up the Concorde disaster was that the footage of an aircraft with a hundred foot flame shooting out of the back was incredibly powerful, and nothing is going to get our hobby aircraft banned more quickly than something like that.

And thanks for the response, ascension. While financial damage is obviously a problem for the airline industry, I don't think it would have the same effect on the general public and thus their representatives in government.

 

[OCsurfer411]

Pilots hate drones, so everything and anything they see is a drone.

Handy graphic
View attachment 2266

Love that graphic.

One of the guys I fly with is a recently retired commercial pilot, who also flies with the Coast Guard reserve (fixed and rotary wing). We were just discussing this story yesterday, and here were his observations:

1) No way any non-military drone could get to 11,000 feet. I've taken my drone to the DJI ceiling of 500 meters a few times, and just taking it straight up and straight down that distance consumes 30% of the battery. Getting it seven times higher than that would require a battery 4X-5X the size of the battery supplied with the Mavic or the Phantom 4. And this then adds to battery weight, so it might actually need something more like 10X the size of the battery supplied to a standard drone. This isn't even to mention requiring a controller that can control a drone 11,000 feet away from the pilot, of which DJI is one of the few that can claim this.

2) As a pilot, I can tell you there's NO WAY I'd be able to accurately identify a drone at 11,000 feet traveling above 300 knots. About 6 months ago, I was flying in fixed wing prop along the California coast and there were 4 of us in the cockpit. We ALL thought we spotted a P4 about 400 feet below us, just above a ridge with some buildings on it. I stared at it for 8-10 seconds and was SURE it was a P3 or a P4...and everyone in the cockpit who saw it all swore up and down that it was a drone. Then it flapped its wings....it was a bird.

3) If you peruse the FAA site for drone sightings, there's a page that shows all of them. There's thousands of them. I spent a weekend parsing through them and nearly half of them ended up being authorized flights...either military or civilians with proper licenses and COAs to be flying where they were flying. Yet the media and the FAA still count those as "drone spottings" to imply they are drones flying where they shouldn't be and without authorization. I can't help but wonder what percentage of the other 50% were people who, like me, thought a bird was a drone. Hell, I've been flying in a helicopter before and had GC tell use a drone had been spotted where we were flying it and it turned out the civilian who reported the drone thought WE were a drone.

 

[DirkGently]

Love that graphic.

One of the guys I fly with is a recently retired commercial pilot, who also flies with the Coast Guard reserve (fixed and rotary wing). We were just discussing this story yesterday, and here were his observations:....

A lot of good points. These crazy stories might not seem important but if the general public get it in to their heads drones are one of the biggest dangers to life or privacy then it'll be easy for politicians to ban them outright - as they have in Sweden.

All we can do is fly safely, respect others privacy and leave comments on crazy articles on websites where they report clearly incorrect fact about drones and their dangers.