By Kathryn A. Wolfe
11/11/14 5:55 PM EST
Last spring’s headlines
were ominous, hinting at a dangerous new era for air travel: A drone
had nearly collided with a US Airways jet over Florida, with results
that could have been “catastrophic.”
The reality, according to a FAA document obtained by POLITICO: The pilot said his close encounter was with a remote-controlled model plane — apparently of the type hobbyists have been flying for decades.
The FAA is still investigating the incident, which might indeed have posed a risk to the passenger jet. But the newly released record offers a reminder that not everyone agrees on what is meant by the word “drone,” a term that can encompass anything from a toy quadcopter to a military weapon — complicating the debate about whether, and how, federal authorities should regulate their use in the civilian skies.
The March 22 incident near Tallahassee, Fla., came to light in May when
Jim Williams, head of the FAA’s Unmanned Aircraft Systems office,
presented it as a cautionary tale during a speech at a drone business expo
in San Francisco. He used that incident, and anecdotes about wayward
drones injuring people on the ground, as reasons for the need for his
agency to write regulations on standards for the unmanned craft.
Though drones can be small, the consequences of ingesting even something
the size of a goose into an aircraft engine can be disastrous,
especially during takeoff or landing. “Imagine a metal and plastic
object, especially with [a] big lithium battery, going into a high-speed
engine. The results could be catastrophic,” Williams said in his
address, which The Associated Press quickly picked up on. Soon, the incident was leading CNN’s website for hours.
The episode was among the first well-publicized accounts of a drone almost colliding with a passenger airplane.
But
according to the FAA’s preliminary near-midair collision report, which
POLITICO obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, the offending
object may not have been a drone at all, but rather a remote-control
hobbyist aircraft.
Read more: http://www.politico.com