Stories of drones involved in a close call with a passenger aircraft have been pretty common lately, and it makes perfect sense as to why one should register the drone with the FAA – so that folks will be more responsible and be careful when flying their new toys. In one of the more recent incidents of near-misses, we hear of a jetliner being involved in a close call with an unmanned drone while approaching LAX.
According to the pilot of a commercial jetliner, he cited that his plane came very close to colliding with a drone as he made an approach to the Los Angeles International Airport on Friday afternoon, which then resulted in the L.A. police and sheriff’s officials pulling out all stops to hunt down the owner of the unmanned aircraft.
This particular near-miss was reported prior to 2 p.m., approximately 14 miles east of the airport at an elevation of 5,000 feet, where a Lufthansa Airbus A380 was the jetliner in question, and the drone actually flew 200 feet over the aircraft, according to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The destruction of a drone hitting an airplane is the least of our worries, we are more worried about the entire aircraft malfunctioning and causing a loss of lives.