{"id":365051,"date":"2025-08-22T16:26:22","date_gmt":"2025-08-22T16:26:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/365051\/"},"modified":"2025-08-22T16:26:22","modified_gmt":"2025-08-22T16:26:22","slug":"drone-risked-plane-collision-over-central-london","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/365051\/","title":{"rendered":"Drone ‘risked plane collision’ over central London"},"content":{"rendered":"

There was a “definite risk of collision” when a large drone flew close to a passenger plane in mid-air over central London, an aviation safety body has found.<\/p>\n

An airline pilot described how the “triangular” drone partially blocked his view as the plane flew in clear skies at 9,200 ft (2,804m) just after 18:00 GMT on 19 May.<\/p>\n

The Airbus A320 had reached a speed of 287mph (462km\/h) soon after taking off from Heathrow when crew saw a “bright white object pass overheard from the opposite direction” according to the report by the UK Airprox Board (UKAB).<\/p>\n

The legal UK limit for flying drones is 400ft (120m) in unrestricted airspace.<\/p>\n

The report said<\/a>: “The object appeared to be approximately 2-3m in size at the very least, it may have been larger as it filled a good proportion of the windshield.<\/p>\n

“The first officer observed that it was triangular in shape. <\/p>\n

“The pilot stated that the object ‘went over us, probably within about 10 metres’,” the report said.<\/p>\n

The UKAB, which monitors near misses in aviation, concluded that “providence had played a major part in the incident and a definite risk of collision had existed”.<\/p>\n

The incident was immediately reported to air traffic controllers, the report said, although the drone operator was not located, according to the UKAB.<\/p>\n

An Airbus A320 can carry as many as 180 passengers, although it is not know how many people were on board at the time or which airline it was operated by.<\/p>\n

The rise in popularity of drones has been an ongoing issue for the aviation industry, particularly since a major incident affecting Gatwick Airport in December 2018.<\/a><\/p>\n

Hundreds of thousands of people had their Christmas holiday plans ruined by drones being repeatedly flown near the airport, which police described as “deliberate act” of disruption.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There was a “definite risk of collision” when a large drone flew close to a passenger plane in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":365052,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7757],"tags":[748,393,4884,257,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-365051","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-london","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-london","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115073358302222090","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=365051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365051\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/365052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=365051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=365051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=365051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}