Look at the disruption a drone can cause!

Roberto Saracco November 4, 2017 Blog 494 Views

Drones have hit the mass market and you can get one for a few hundred bucks. A little toy that can cause damages in the hundred of thousands of euros… Image Credit: Dreamstime

Look at a drone, and then look at a commercial aircraft. There is no comparison! It is like comparing a mouse with an elephant, and then some more.
Pliny the Elderly 2000 years ago claimed that elephants were afraid of mice, and more recent experiments seem to confirm that. At least to the point that when seeing a mouse an elephant changes its direction.

Well, I was reminded of that in seeing the clip (look at it, it is great!) showing the mess caused by a drone on July 2nd, 2017, at Gatwick airport. On that day a drone was seen flying nearby the landing path to Gatwick runway and as a precaution the runway was closed for a few minutes, twice, actually, for a total of 14 minutes.

14 minutes do not seem a lot, and yet, they were sufficient to cause a major disruption to air traffic that led to a few aircrafts diverted to other airport, thousands of passengers delayed with missing connection and hundreds of thousands of euros wasted.

This is telling a lot about the complexity of our world where a little hiccup can have major effect.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdfVIdsufI8