With experience as an ex-helicopter pilot (1), ex-balloon pilot (2) and (3) ex-airline pilot and now a drone pilot. 1 and 2 possibly able to spot a drone but 3 extremely unlikely at the speeds airline travel. The most likely encounter would be near an airport landing where there is a high workload. There are, however, no-fly zones around major airports so unless someone hacked the software unlikely.
I posted this on another thread
<<Recently London Gatwick Airport (LGW) was closed over an alleged drone incident. One worker on leaving the LGW airport reported seeing a drone. LGW was closed and all flights diverted or grounded causing much inconvenience to thousands and considerable expense. Police became involved and put up their own drones adding to the confusion. Police eventually arrested a completely innocent drone owner which was widely covered by the news services and newspapers. The drone owner and his wife were completely innocent and suffered major trauma from the handling of them by the police and news media. They were released without charge having been held for at least one night in police cells. Eventually, LGW called in the military with their anti-drone equipment. Drone enthusiasts (a long way away up north in Yorkshire) were interviewed by the media and told them it would have been impossible for any reasonably large drone (other than a small toy) to fly near an airport due to the software preventing it. Anyone over-riding the software would need a lot of software knowledge to do so. Despite much investigation, it has not been possible to prove there was a drone. No-one else, to my knowledge, has been arrested in connection with the 'incident'. There was footage of a drone shown on the media but no proof of time or date to show it related to the 'actual incident'. The police theory is there was someone in the airport who was relaying information on airport authorities actions to another person(s) that flew the drone. The one good thing that came out of this is the authorities are now well aware that they are not at all prepared for any possible terrorist attack near airports using drones. I relate this so all drone users are aware of how incredibly sensitive people are to drones and we should do our utmost to protect our hobby against any unnecessary draconian measures to prevent our flights. Commercial aviation is international so all of us could be affected wherever the drone flying may occur. Enjoy your drone flying!>>
Rick raises some very good points. The public perception of the authorities not being prepared is not new. I have said for many
years that it would be extremely easy to mount a terrorist attack on just about any facility, given you have even a cursory knowledge of radio controlled devices. DJI's monitoring devices would handle the vast majority of recently sold UAVs that might be in the air at any given time. (A homebuilt unit using off the shelf components, like many of us built years ago, would be virtually untraceable.) It appears that prisons these days, are more prepared than far more sensitive facilities, to handle intrusions into their airspace.
I have said as well, that like computer hackers, you need to find a way to get the hackers and put them out of their misery, or hire them to find out your vulnerabilities. (Hackers and virus builders create billions of dollars of damage, but little is done to put those guys away. UAV flyers are the convenient target these days.) But the authorities seem not to have figured that out either. In the case of Gatwick, it seems a number of enthusiasts came forward to help in the overall investigation, but they were essentially ignored. Authorities with a "We know best" attitude cannot be helped ... much! So when the FAA or any other flight authority ignores the likes of the AMA or model groups, they are ignoring knowledgeable and authoritative sources that could provide them with loads of information that would, at minimum, be helpful to their investigations. (What they could do with the likes of a Sar104!)
For all my travels, and for all the drones that are out there somewhere, I have seen extremely few actual UAVs - anywhere! Probably more than 3/4 of drones sold are in someone's closet or garage, never to see the light of day again, and of the rest, they are only used less than 1% of the time - far less by my calculations. So the chance of seeing ANY UAV is extremely small, and seeing one near an airport is even less.
Amateur UAV operators could be tapped into in many ways. Search and rescue comes to mind immediately. A co-ordinated effort on the part of authorities could access numbers of individuals who could be available for these efforts, in the same way that police use volunteers for ground searches and cave rescues, yet they don't. There are a lot of resources among many of us on this site that could be accessed. Just sayin'
