Near Major Airports, Drones Pose a Growing Concern

For air travelers—and, more to the point, for pilots—a slew of recent incidents highlights a growing concern:

• A commercial airliner was on final approach to San Francisco International Airport in November when the crew spotted a drone outside the cockpit window. By then it was too late "to take evasive action," the pilots reported, and the quadcopter passed by their windshield, not 300 feet away.
• A month earlier, a jetliner was flying at an altitude of 4,000 feet near Miami International Airport when its pilots reported a "close encounter" with a drone.
• In August, a drone came within 50 feet of clipping the left wing of a passenger jet as it departed Newark International Airport.

The incidents were all classified as "near midair collisions"—any one of which could have had catastrophic consequences, according to aviation safety experts. And they were also not isolated encounters. An AP analysis of an aviation safety database reveals that drones last year accounted for nearly two-thirds of reported near midair collisions involving commercial passenger planes taking off and landing at the country's top 30 busiest airports. That was the highest percentage of such near-misses since 2020, when air traffic dropped during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The first reports of near-misses involving drones were logged in 2014, the AP found. The number of such encounters spiked the following year. Over the last decade, drones accounted for 51%—122 of 240—of reported near-misses, according to AP's analysis. The threat has become more acute in the last decade as the use of quadcopters and remote-controlled planes has exploded in popularity. The FAA estimates that Americans are operating more than a million drones for recreational and commercial purposes. Read the full story, which details some of the ways the FAA is trying to curb the danger, along with future possible fixes.

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