One of Britain\u2019s most famous exports is T-shirts that proudly say \u2018Keep calm and carry on\u2019. The saying was first coined during WWII but what the British do not tell you is that the slogan was never used during the war. If events at Gatwick are any guide, the reason for that is that the message is a lie. What we saw in Gatwick was the exact opposite of that slogan. It was huge panic and a total freeze in operations. Keeping calm and carrying on would have been much smarter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
The purpose of the protest was to disrupt operations \u2013 apparently for\n environmental reasons \u2013 and it has to be said that it was a total, \ntotal success. The green protesters must be delighted with the results. \nExpect copy-cat operations around Europe, just as soon as the \nenvironmentalists get back from their holidays.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But why did the airport freeze? For safety reasons, they say. Think \nabout that. The protest was not aimed at hitting aircraft with drones. \nIf it was, the drones were at the wrong airport. And they stayed at the \nwrong airport for more than 24 hours. There were no planes to hit. No, \nthe aim of protest was to cause disruption. Tick. It caused huge \ndisruption.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So why did the airport not respond with a clear-headed response \ninstead? Flying aircraft would have put the protesters into a much more \ndifficult position. It is already clear they did not want to be mass \nmurderers. They flew the drones to keep the aircraft on the ground, not \nto make them plunge into the ground. If they were trying to murder \ntravellers they would have moved on immediately. Let me repeat \u2013 they \ndid not do that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Secondly, if the protesters were mass murders they would not have \nused drones. There are significantly more effective ways to bring \naircraft down than with the use of a tiny drone against a huge aircraft.\n It is also totally untested that it would even work. There are huge \nquestions about the likelihood of something like a drone \u2013 almost \ncertain to be sucked into an engine \u2013 having any impact at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There have been some tests done, but none that actually show anything\n worthwhile. If you fire a drone out of a cannon and it hits the \naircraft window it will break it, one test shows. How to fire a drone \nout of a cannon that close to an aircraft remains an unanswered \nquestion. Indeed, given the unquestioning way that study was seized upon\n to prove a point \u2013 by the pilots\u2019 union \u2013 it remains an unasked \nquestion too. The same tests also showed that hitting a high speed drone\n whilst in cruise at 33,000 feet is also likely to be dangerous. What \nthat has to do with this situation is also in the \u2018further work to be \ndone\u2019 category. But it will never be done. That is yet another question \nthat will be both unasked and unanswered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The study above was sponsored by the pilots. Pilots have led the \nscare campaign about drones from the start. They fear, rightly, for \ntheir jobs. So they have told the world that drones are a menace. Shame \non us for falling for such self-motivated nonsense. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of Britain\u2019s most famous exports is T-shirts that proudly say \u2018Keep calm and carry on\u2019. The saying was first coined during WWII but what the British do not tell you is that the slogan was never used during the war. If events at Gatwick are any guide, the reason for that is that the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-air-traffic-management"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=859"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":861,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859\/revisions\/861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}