Not a threat to airplanes

[wco81]

A United Airlines flight was struck by an object when it was cruising at well over 30k feet.

There was speculation that it was space debris but the operator of weather balloons said they believe it was one of their weather balloons. There was damage to the windshield frame of the cockpit but the company said their weather balloons don’t pose a threat to airplanes.

“The quick answer is our constellation of Global Sounding Balloons (GSBs), which we call WindBorne Atlas, doesn’t pose a threat to airplanes or other objects in the sky. It’s not only highly improbable that a WindBorne balloon could even collide with an aircraft in the first place; but our balloons are so lightweight that they would not cause significant damage.

WindBorne also said that its balloons are compliant with all applicable airspace regulations.

It wasn’t space debris that struck a United Airlines plane—it was a weather balloon

WindBorne says its balloons are compliant with all applicable airspace regulations.

arstechnica.com

The balloons weigh 1.2 kilograms and licensed to operate at high altitudes, he same altitudes planes fly at.

So why are drones which weigh less and probably has smaller volumes risk to planes but these heavier weather balloons operating at thousands of ft of altitude not a threat? If a drone could potentially take out an engine, why wouldn’t these licensed balloons pose a similar risk?

 

[AeroJ]

Yes, I too find myself rather in the Scott Manley camp when it comes to the cause of this particular incident in believing it was likely to be part of a weather balloon that collided with the windshield.

Of course you raise a perfectly valid point, and the same points also apply to paragliders and hang-gliders, both of which have very few rules or restrictions and pose a far greater risk to manned aviation than our tiny drones ever could. And of course you feel the same exasperation and depression as the rest of us that drone rules are so entirely unrelated to safety risk, and so much more about punitive control for hobbyists with the aim of eventually removing us from the airspace altogether, leaving it free for profit-making enterprise of largely unaccountable corporations, who, as we already see (recent amazon drones crash for example) don't get punished / sanctioned to anything like the same degree as we would when their machines actually do crash and injure people / damage property !