Drone nearly hits airplane in San Francisco

Published August 24, 2017 This content is archived.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that drone nearly struck a commercial airliner in California. The newspaper interviews Javid Bayandor, director of the Crashworthiness for Aerospace Structures and Hybrids Lab at UB. The severity of a collision would depend on several factors, including the relative speeds of the aircraft, the size and weight of the drone and whether the airplane’s cabin was fully pressurized, he said. “The answer is nothing really good comes out of it,” Bayandor said of a potential collision. “At any cost, it has to be avoided.”