HOUSTON - There have been a startling number of incidents reported where drones flying in the skies of Houston are getting dangerously close to commercial flights.
The Federal Aviation Administration gets about 25 reports a month from pilots who have spotted drones or model aircraft near them in the air.
Wednesday the agency revealed there have been six sightings near Houston airports since last April.
The earliest report was on April 8, not of a drone in the air, but on the ground where it apparently crashed outside an HEB in Cypress. Investigators theorized the owner had been using it to photograph a traffic accident nearby.
But four months later on Aug. 10 the pilot of a small plane discovered a drone sharing airspace with him. Charlie Spurell told Local 2 by phone that both his plane and the drone were at about 2,500 feet.
"It's dangerous for the air traffic," Spruell said. "Helicopters, anyone who's flying around them because you run into them you're going to have an accident and there's no way of detecting them other than visually."
The same day the pilot of a medical helicopter flying at an altitude of 800 feet spotted a drone flying about 100 feet below him near Bush Airport.
The next month, a drone aircraft was seen flying low over a Deer Park refinery. On two separate occasions last October, pilots of Express Jet airliners reported seeing drones hovering at about 1,000 feet 5 miles west of Bush Airport.
Incursion by drones into commercial air space is a growing concern. In releasing the data, the FAA also said: "The FAA is in the process of executing a plan for a safe and staged integration of unmanned aircraft into the National Airspace System."
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