Drones must be more stringently regulated, and quickly
FLYING above the legal height (120m), in a banned area, at night. The drone which came within 20m of a police Eagle helicopter in Auckland, early on
New Year’s Day, broke lots of rules. And there was very good reason for those rules. Breaking them put the helicopter’s occupants, and those below it, celebrating the New Year, at high risk of injury and death. The same night the occupants of a helicopter filming the New Year’s Eve Sky Tower light show reportedly saw three drones within a few metres of their machine. It’s hard to comprehend how any drone operator could be so thoughtless and irresponsible.
These two episodes weren’t isolated incidents. In October a drone came within 3m of an
Auckland Westpac Rescue Helicopter near Takapuna, while it was flying, at a height of 400m and a speed of 230kph, to a car crash. In April one came close to an air force helicopter, at 914m, as it prepared to land at Whenuapai. In March a drone came within 5m of a Boeing 777200 at it approached Auckland Airport (drones aren’t allowed within 4km of an aerodrome) with 278 passengers and crew aboard, and earlier that month all flight operations at the airport were halted for half an hour after a pilot reported one within controlled air space. Further afield, Gatwick airport, Britain’s second busiest, was closed for two days just before Christmas after drones were reported in its airspace, disrupting the travel of 140,000 passengers, and Heathrow — even busier — shut down for an hour this week.
In June, responding to an Airline Pilots Association call for an urgent review of drone rules, and (backed by commercial drone industry pioneer Robyn Kamira) for compulsory registration of drones, the Civil Aviation Authority said it was consulting with drone users on whether the present rules were working for them, but had no immediate plans to review the rules round drone use. What a pathetic attitude! The prime consideration, surely, should be those affected by dangerous use of drones, not the fools misusing them.
The CAA should be talking urgently to the Government about requiring all drones in New Zealand to be registered and geofenced, as Britain plans to do. And surely it should be possible to require them to be identifiable by radio signal while flying. That would enable those breaking the rules to be held responsible for their actions. Those running the CAA should get off their butts, and do their job.
The photo inside the back cover of Mira’s book was by her husband (clearly a superb photographer), and family support was obvious at the book launch — they had produced the delicious food consumed, after the official launch of the book in Dunedin Hospital’s Barnett lecture theatre, while those present queued to buy books and get them autographed.
The hospital was an obvious place to launch Admissions — Tales of life, death & love in a hospital not far from here . . . , by Mira Harrison. As the title suggests, each of the eight linked short stories in the book, published by Steele Roberts Aotearoa, focuses on someone working in a hospital — receptionist, obstetrician, cleaner, professor, house officer, theatre sister, cook, and night nurse.
Civis hopes the ODT will review it (it’s very good), but in view of previous comments in this column about the Southern District Health Board outsourcing the preparation of patient meals to the Auckland branch of a multinational company, and seeing, in the paediatric ward, the result, it’s hard to resist commenting on the sixth story: The Cook’s Tale: Shamira.
It underlines the value, for sick people, of caring, personalised, inhouse production of meals (‘‘cooking is an act of love, an act of caring’’), impossible to match with food prepared elsewhere and trucked up to 1400km.
SDHB members and management who pushed through the Compass contract should read it, and hang their heads in shame.