Digging Deeper into the Drone Swarm Event – Episode 292

Viewer questions lead to continued discussion in Episode 288 about a fleet of unknown drones that violated FAA regulations by flying near an airliner for an hour. John Goglia and Todd Curtis provide additional insights.

Would cameras in the cockpit be helpful? Probably not. Advances in flight data recorder technology have allowed flight data recorders to track over a thousand inputs about the state of the aircraft, including most of the information that a camera in the cockpit could provide. In the case of the drones, the pilots would have had a better view compared to a cockpit camera, which would have been designed to capture images inside the cockpit rather than outside.

Were the drones UFOs? Unidentified anomalous phenomena (AUP) has replaced the term UFO in many government organizations.

Whatever the term used, an issue for pilots is the social stigma about reporting something that could be a UAP. The pilots of the airliner that was followed sent a message indirectly to air traffic controllers rather than sending the message by radio, potentially putting other aircraft at risk by delaying communication to other pilots about a potential hazard.

Continuing the focus on drones, a pair of test drones recently crashed due to a software error. The software error that caused the drones to crash is one of several risks posed by large-scale commercial operations. John discussed proposed FAA regulations that would set standards for this kind of drone operation.

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Resources:

NTSB Reports of Two Amazon Drone Crashes Caused by the Same Software Issue
NTSB_Amazon_MK30_2_WPR25LA063.pdf
NTSB_Amazon_MK30_2_WPR25LA064.pdf

Proposed FAA Rules for Low Flying Commercial Drones

A 2022 Software Issue that Grounded 15,000 Southwest Flights