Airbus came within 33ft of colliding with illegal drone

AN AIRLINE pilot said a drone came within 33ft of crashing into his Airbus 319 with 156 passengers on board just after it took off from Heathrow.

A report by the UK Airprox Board has revealed that the pilot believed only fate prevented a potential disaster. The aircraft was flying at 2,500ft about three miles south east of the airport when the crew saw “a large drone” pass 33ft above their left wing.

The drone, which was being flown illegally, was described as being just over 2ft in diameter and “white, with yellow markings”.

The report by the UK board, which investigates aircraft incidents, rated it a Category A incident – the highest – where there was a serious risk of collision.

It happened at 6.48pm on May 28 this year when the jet was “on a weather avoidance heading”. The report said: “There was no time to take any avoiding action and there was a very high risk of collision.”

It added that “providence had played a major part” in avoiding a collision, according to the pilot’s account.

Drone operators are normally only permitted to fly below 400ft and are expected to stay well away from airports. Drone operators who endanger the safety of an aircraft can be jailed for five years.

The name of the airline company operating the jet was not revealed in the report, but it is the latest in a series of such incidents involving drones and aircraft in Britain’s air space. It was reported in March that incidents involving drones had tripled over the past two years with 92 reported last year and just 29 in 2015.

A recent study found that a mid-air collision involving a 4lb drone could “critically damage” a plane’s windscreen. In 2016, a British Airways plane carrying 132 passengers from Geneva was thought to have been hit by a drone before landing safely. Patrick Mcloughlin, transport secretary at the time, later told MPS the collision with the Airbus A320 was not “a drone incident”.