British Airways A321 at London on Jul 18th 2016, near collision with a drone
Last Update: November 17, 2016 / 15:48:56 GMT/Zulu time
Incident Facts
Date of incident
Jul 18, 2016
Classification
Incident
Cause
Near collision
Airline
British Airways
Flight number
BA-777
Departure
Stockholm, Sweden
Destination
London Heathrow, United Kingdom
Aircraft Registration
G-MEDU
Aircraft Type
Airbus A321
ICAO Type Designator
A321
The UK Airprox Board wrote (providing the aircraft type as A320 instead of A321 and position N51°31 E000°05 instead of N51°31 W000°05): "Members agreed that this incident appeared to be a very near-miss and that the drone operator should not have been flying in that location at that altitude. Consequently, it was determined that the drone was flown into conflict with the A320. Turning to the risk, although the incident did not show on the NATS radars, the Board noted that the pilot had estimated the separation to be 20m from the aircraft, at co-altitude, and that there had not been time to take any avoiding action. Acknowledging the difficulties in judging separation visually without external references, the Board considered that the pilot’s estimate of separation, allied to his overall account of the incident, portrayed a situation where a collision had only been narrowly avoided and chance had played a major part; they therefore determined the risk to be Category A."
Incident Facts
Date of incident
Jul 18, 2016
Classification
Incident
Cause
Near collision
Airline
British Airways
Flight number
BA-777
Departure
Stockholm, Sweden
Destination
London Heathrow, United Kingdom
Aircraft Registration
G-MEDU
Aircraft Type
Airbus A321
ICAO Type Designator
A321
This article is published under license from Avherald.com. © of text by Avherald.com.
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