This $4.4bn Technology Is CHANGING Aviation
- Whenever you see drones in the news, it's usually because of something bad happening, like how they've caused airspace closures or even worse, actually hitting aircraft. And that is really a shame, because for many users, including aviation in general, drones can actually be a force of good. So what do I mean by that? And does that really make up for all of the havoc that they can cause? Stay tuned. - [Reporter 1] Putting other aircraft at risk. - [Reporter 2] Collision between an airplane and a drone.
- There are nearly 410,000 commercially registered drones in the United States today, and nearly 386,000 recreational drone flyers. And when you compare that to the approximately 29,000 airliners in service worldwide, you can understand why we now need to start treating drones seriously. I'm sure many of you have seen the news from the LA Fires and the firefighting aircraft that was hit by a drone.
I actually covered that briefly in my recent monthly news video if you missed it. Now, these firefighting aircraft are really, really cool and worth a closer look before we get into the drones. Now, I know I'm nerding out a little bit here, but I'm guessing that's actually why you're here. So in this case, the aircraft used was a de Havilland CL-415, known to most people as the Canadair CL-415, which is what they were called when they were originally made.
The first one of those flew back in 1993, but it was based on a much older design, the CL-215, which dates back all the way to the late 1960s. Those first planes were basically equipped with World War II era radial piston engines, which were very reliable and awesome. Now, the CL-415 of today instead has the same kind of turboprop engines that you would find on a Dash 8, for example, and both the old and the new variations are amphibious, with a hull to land on water and wheels for the runways. Now, when these wonderful machines go in to fill up with water, they aren't really landing, instead they just skim the surface for around 12 seconds, while they scoop up water through ducts on the underside of the aircraft. With each one of these skims, the CL-415 can scoop up just over 6,100 liters, or around 1,600 gallons, which is about a ton more than the older CL-215 could, hence their current name, the Super Scooper. The new planes don't just have the same engines as the Dash 8, they're also about the same size, but they have a stall speed of just 68 knots, which kind of makes sense, because obviously their hull and everything else about them is expressively designed for firefighting, so they are purpose-built.
They're not just conversions from something else. That sets them apart from the huge air tankers that we often see fighting ires in the United States, which, by the way, are equally awesome. Those pilots are really something else! Now the smaller Super Scoopers can carry less load than those giants can, but they can also often turn around faster, since they can scoop up water from any nearby body of water that's more than 1,400 meters, or 4,600 feet long. Their smaller size also makes them a bit more maneuverable, which means that they can often fly lower or stay low for longer periods, which also means that they have a higher chance of encountering drones.
And that brings us back to those fires in Los Angeles. It turns out that Quebec, in Canada, which normally doesn't need its fleet of firefighting planes in the winter, sends two planes and crew to California every year. They've done that for the last 31 years now, and they usually end up operating out of Van Nuys Airport in Los Angeles. Now what happened in this case was that call sign Quebec One was fighting a fire when it suddenly hit an unauthorized drone, and the impact punched a 3x6 inch hole into the left wing of the aircraft. Thankfully, its crew then managed to land back safely in Van Nuys after the collision, and the plane was then reportedly repaired about four days later and immediately put back into the service alongside the other CL-415s that had flown down from Canada. But obviously, the loss of such a vital asset in the middle of a huge fire was a big disruption, and the temporary loss of the aircraft was not the only disruption either.
All firefighting aircraft, including the large jets and helicopters, had to stop their operations while the authorities worked out whether or not the airspace was safe for them to continue. And like I said in my January recap, this is absolutely unacceptable. We don't know why someone chose to fly the drone in that area at the time of the collision, but this was restricted airspace, so it was definitely illegal, and, of course, extremely dangerous. You see, firefighting aircraft are quite vulnerable when they fly low and slow, fully loaded over terrain that includes not just fires, but also power lines and other obstacles, and that's exactly the kind of environment where you don't want to lose an engine, for example. And drones are actually considered higher risk than bird strike in such a scenario.
There are studies showing that around 8% of drone collisions will lead to engine ingestions, and out of those, as many as one-fifth will then cause engine damage or shutdown. An eight-pound drone, the size of a cat or an Xbox 360, can rip apart the fan blades of a nine-foot diameter engine in just one-two-hundredths of a second. That's the sort of engine that you'll find on a Boeing 787 or an Airbus A330neo.
Now, the drone that hit the CL-415 over Los Angeles wasn't anywhere near as big as that. The photos the FBI published seem to show a 250-gram DJI Mini 3 or 4. And we don't know if that one was recovered from inside of the wing of the firefighting plane or from the ground around the area where it happened. And note, that the drone's battery didn't explode, which was especially fortunate if it made it inside of the wing where the fuel is stored. The problem is that even these smaller drones can cause a lot of damage to an engine or if they go through the cockpit windows of a smaller aircraft. And because they're smaller and cheaper, they're now also a lot more of them out there.
At the last count, there were well over a million-registered drones in the USA alone, and that included these smaller hobby drones all the way up to the bigger ones used for law enforcement, firefighting, which I'll get back to, as well as filming, surveying and many, many other things. And that's just the registered ones. So how serious of a problem are drones really today and what are the upsides of them for aviation? Well, I'll tell you that after this: if you are an entrepreneur or maybe your hobby somehow turned into your full-time job, like in my case, well then Odoo has everything you need in order to fully streamline your operations. Odoo is a business management software with over 45 different apps all designed to make running your business as smooth as possible. Let's talk about their accounting app, for example. It's modern, fast and super efficient, and with a sleek interface Odoo eliminates those annoying frustrations around slow systems and endless data entry.
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To get a real taste of the scale of this problem, we actually have some good FAA numbers to look at. On their website, you can actually see and download the numbers of drone sightings near airports and we took a look at the October to December 2024 period before the LA fires. Over this three-month period, there were 373 such sightings. That's well over 100 times a month when drones have flown in restricted airspace where they are not allowed and then spotted by aircraft.
And these aren't just general aviation reports. Some of them came from large commercial aircraft crews on approach to big airports including Washington, Vegas and Los Angeles. Now sightings obviously don't equal actual collisions, so how many serious close calls and actual collisions have there been? Well, unfortunately the statistics on this aren't very good yet, but a quick answer is, fortunately, not that many. One source we found said that since 2021, there have been over 2,000 drone sightings around the US airports alone and through 2021 and 2022, there were 63 drone incidents where pilots had to take evasive action to avoid hitting them.
Of those, four cases involved commercial aircraft which are obviously going to find it much harder to take evasive action. That's not really something that you do in an Airbus A380 or 747 or even in a 737 for that matter. The most recent data says that six aircraft took evasive action from drones in the first quarter of 2024 and the average separation between aircraft and drones was then estimated at around 215 feet, so not a lot. Most issues with commercial aircraft seem to happen at around one and a half miles from the runway and below 500 feet from the ground. And most the time, the drones are then above the altitude where they would be allowed to fly even if they weren't close to an airport.
In 2018, an Aeromexico 737 was heading into Tijuana airport when they heard a loud bang from something colliding with the front of the aircraft which ended up seriously damaging the nose cone. Now no trace of a drone was found, but there also wasn't any blood or feathers found from any birds which are quite suspicious. Now like I mentioned before, aircraft that routinely fly low like firefighters, general aviation aircraft or helicopters are, of course, even more exposed to drones. For example, back in 2021 a drone crashed through the canopy of a navy helicopter in Chile, hitting an occupant straight in the head and that drone weighed just over half a kilo.
A similar incident then happened in Los Angeles a few months earlier when a guy actually decided to launch his drone to see why a police helicopter was circling his area. And he then obviously hit the helicopter whose crew were thankfully able to land safely. Now that drone operator then successfully became the first person in the United States to be charged for unsafe operation of an unmanned aircraft. (slow clapping) And general aviation aircraft have also had their close encounters with these drones. That includes a Cessna 182 in the Netherlands in 2020 which was hit in the nose through its propeller and was then inspected by a passing army Apache helicopter crew before its pilot managed to land it safely. Now aside from those confirmed drone hits, there have also been many, many, many other close calls where airline pilots have seen drones passing very close by.
In the UK in 2014, an ATR 72 crew saw a drone within 25 meters or 82 feet away while heading into Southend Airport. A 777 also passed within about 80 feet of one departing from Heathrow and a 737 barely missed one on departure from Stansted back in 2015. Two very similar incidents then happened again in Southend in 2019 with the drones flying above the cloud tops which means that their operators couldn't even see them. In the US, there have been even more including a Lufthansa Airbus A380 heading into LAX that came across a drone flying at 5,000 feet. Now I know that some of you might think that these were only close calls. Surely, if there is no metal bent, this isn't such a big deal, right? Well, no.
Other than the risk to the aircraft, their passengers and crews, there is also the disruption to airspace and airports to consider here. Because just like we saw with the firefighter aircraft collision in the Los Angeles area, when drones are spotted in a restricted area, the airspace is then often quickly closed down. And back in 2018, London Gatwick Airport closed exactly because of this. And those closures lasted from December 19th to 21st, right at the start of the Christmas travel period, affecting thousands of flights and around 140,000 passengers. It turns out that that was actually the biggest aviation disruption since the 2010 volcanic eruption in Iceland.
More recently, in December of 2024, repeated sightings of mystery drones in the New Jersey area led to closures of some air force bases, temporary closures at Stewart International Airport and a lot of airspace restrictions which then continued into mid-January of 2025. And we haven't even started mentioning all of the whacky conspiracy theories around that. So what are we doing about all of this then? Well, fortunately, figuring out ways of identifying drones is now getting a lot easier. Newer drones incorporate tracking technology that is similar to transponders or ADS-B transmitters for aircraft except they have a slightly shorter range. And most drones flying in the US must comply with an FAA standard called Remote ID which works kind of like digital license plates. With that on board, those drones then transmits a unique ID number, their location and altitude, plus the location of the place that they took off from.
Now drones weighing less than 250 grams technically don't need to meet this requirement if they're flown recreationally only. But many of these smaller drones including the one that was hit by the firefighting plane in LA do have remote ID to cover professional use if needed. Drones themselves also incorporate GPS and a database that defines areas around airports and other sensitive locations where they shouldn't fly. So even if the operator wants them to fly over there, they won't, at least in theory. But what if the drone operator fiddles with these standards, doesn't register the drone properly or what if the drone doesn't even have these features in the first place? Well, fortunately, here we're also getting better at tracking none-cooperative drones and their operators.
In some environments, high resolution radars can actually track small drones but a broader strategy is to use the frequencies that drones use to communicate with their operators which allows the authorities to track both of them. Even DJI itself created a ground-based system called Aeroscope for this purpose and using that, operators of airports, prisons, nuclear power plants and other such installations can detect drone radio signals while the drones are still many kilometers away. And if all of that still doesn't deter people, well then if you're caught flying where you shouldn't in the US, you could face a fine of up to $75,000 plus 12 months in prison.
And those penalties, they are actually being used. Between October 2022 and June of 2024, the FAA levied over $340,000 in fines against 27 individuals caught flying where they shouldn't have. And as I said before there's no excuse for using drones in an irresponsible way like putting it in the path of an aircraft. And another repercussion of doing this is that it could eventually tighten regulations around drone uses so much that it could limit their potential, which we really don't actually want because drones can be beneficial in many ways including for aviation. For one thing, they can be used in firefighting. Now quadcopters or multi-copter drones can't really carry enough water to tackle a blazing inferno, but they can do other things.
For example, they can track and fly over fires and detect hidden hotspots with thermal cameras in order to direct ground crews and aircraft there faster. Drones can also do some pretty unique tricks in firefighting like carry a water hose high up to the side of a tall building to fight areas as high up as 150 meters or 40 floors up as a first response that will buy very precious time for firefighters that are racing to the scene. At airports, firefighters can also use drones to get a top-down view of how an aircraft fire is progressing because newer aircraft made out of composites don't melt in the way that aluminium aircraft fuselages do. Instead, they tend to weaken and often collapse in large sections, requiring careful monitoring in a developing situation. Drones also play search and rescue roles in remote areas. They can quickly build 3D models of an accident site and on top of that, the FAA is also considering using drones in security roles to monitor airport perimeters for example.
And inside the airport, drones could replace cruising cars that drive up and down the runways and taxiways, looking for debris or stray animals. That's a really time-consuming job which comes with its own risks for these crews and for aircraft. Believe me, because I used to do that myself when I was an airport firefighter. Now we actually saw an example of how these risks can play out back in 2019 when a vehicle was cleared onto the active runway at Gatwick Airport for an inspection in front of an Airbus A320 that had just landed. When that aircraft touched down and was still decelerating, the tower controller asked the pilots if they would be able to clear the runway at a high speed exit called Foxrot Romeo and when they confirmed that they could, ATC cleared the inspection vehicle onto the runway from Taxiway Golf, in front of the aircraft but a little bit further down and then for the vehicle to exit behind the aircraft at Foxrot Romeo.
Now the aircraft was still doing around 60 knots as it approached the high speed exit at the same time as the vehicle entered the runway, heading straight towards them. Now I should be clear here to say that there was likely no risk of collision or any real risk here but the reason that an incident report was still filed was because it really surprised the pilots to see a car heading towards them during the landing roll and it ended up being quite a big distraction. Now of course using drones instead of this role could introduce different risks and drones could also have some weather-related operating limits that still make cars necessary in some conditions.
But if done properly, they could perform inspections faster, helping to improve turnaround times at airport. In other places at the airport, drones can also really help crews when performing last-minute external inspections. Imagine a pilot performing a walk-around for example and then the pilot would see something high up on the tail fin of a widebody like a 787 or an Airbus A380. In big airliners like those, figuring out if something that you see is a smudge or a small or even a big dent would mean waiting for a crew with a crane to arrive then set it up and raise someone up to the tail. That person then need to take a picture or describe what they see to the pilot and after that they would then need to collapse the crane back down and remove it, something I have actually had to do on a couple of occasions. And instead the airport could just use a small drone that could quickly be sent up to the tail fin while the pilot could look at the drone's camera on an iPad and assess the damage in real time which sounds pretty good to me.
Drones can also have similar advantages even during scheduled maintenance, helping crews prioritize fixes instantly. And in the United States, Delta Airlines is already using drones to do exactly that, for example to inspect aircraft after lightning strikes. So that means that drone inspections are now actually part of Delta's aircraft maintenance manual which is cool. The truth is that we're really only beginning to scratch the surface of what is possible with drones today. In the Netherlands and Sweden, ambulance drones can now carry a defibrillator out to someone who calls for the emergency services, complete with instructions for that person or any passers-by on how to use it.
There's even a webcam, a speaker, and a microphone where a remote nurse can give people instructions while help is on the way. And on top of that, a friend of mine in Sweden are working with a company called Airforestry who actually use drones to cut trees. It's insanely impressive and comes with a huge efficiency benefit. On top of those examples, there are of course also bigger fixed-wing drones out there but here, I'm sticking to the quadcopter types that most of us think of when we hear the word drones.
The bigger machines often have internal combustion engines or even turboprops and really blur the definition of drones and un-piloted aircraft which, of course, is a subject for a different video. But knowing all of this, there is no question in my mind that drones do have a place and actually a pretty important one in the aviation world. The drone market is currently worth around US$4.4 billion. And there could be as many as 7.6 million drones worldwide, a number that will just keep growing.
But with that, it is also true that we need to understand and use drones appropriately and make sure that they don't cause any harm. So if you're a fan of drones, let me just repeat this: do not let your actions endanger others or break existing rules because not only is that obviously dangerous and stupid, it will also only lead to more restrictions and regulations that might stifle innovations in this field. But what do you think? Can you come up with another use case for drones and what do you think will happen in the future? Let me know in the comments here below and remember to like and subscribe when you're down there. Now I am right now preparing for my next Patreon hangout and if you want to take part, well then go to: patreon.com/join/mentourpilot. My name is Petter Hörnfeldt. And you are watching Mentour Now! Check these videos out next and have an absolutely fantastic day.
Bye bye.
2025-02-12 19:41
