{"id":23893,"date":"2019-10-11T06:42:41","date_gmt":"2019-10-11T10:42:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mdpair.com\/uk-house-of-commons-committee-finds-helicopters-most-at-risk-from-drones\/"},"modified":"2019-10-11T06:42:41","modified_gmt":"2019-10-11T10:42:41","slug":"uk-house-of-commons-committee-finds-helicopters-most-at-risk-from-drones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mdpair.com\/?p=23893","title":{"rendered":"UK House of Commons committee finds helicopters most at risk from drones"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/mdpair.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/1570761820_cibi-chakravarthi-s71w8vpb-ek-unsplash_story-1.jpg\" \/><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>A new report from the UK\u2019s House of Commons Science and Technology Committee has revealed that helicopters are the most at risk from drones among aircraft due to a number of factors which make them particularly vulnerable. The report comes at a time when the UK, among other countries, is weighing up the pros and cons of different pieces of drone legislation.<\/p>\n<p>According to the latest report, the risk factors for helicopters are three-fold. The British Airline Pilots Association (BALPA) listed them as follows:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<ul>\n<li>Helicopters are supremely susceptible to catastrophic damage in the event of a drone strike to any part of the aircraft including the windscreen and main and tail rotors.<\/li>\n<li>Helicopters are often required to be flown in dense urban areas or in mission critical scenarios where the margin for error is very small.<\/li>\n<li>A large number of helicopter missions are to incidents where there is likely to be an increase in drone activity anyway, such as traffic accidents, police incidents etc.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Babcock International, the largest air ambulance operator in the UK also said that drones pose a risk to Helicopter Emergency Medical Service (HEMS) aircraft because they have to land in areas without no-fly perimeters. Babcock International also added that flying unmanned aircraft, such as drones, below 400ft (0.12km) &quot;significantly reduces the likelihood of a collision with a manned aircraft&quot;.<\/p>\n<p>In order to help mitigate the risk to helicopters, BALPA and Babcock International recommended that the government introduces temporary drone flight restriction zones around helicopter landing zones. The two organisations suggested a zone of one kilometre and that it ought to be legislated upon within the next twelve months. Such exclusion zones would complement <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gov.uk\/government\/news\/new-extended-drone-no-fly-zone-in-place-from-today\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">already existing laws<\/a> which prohibit drones to be flown within five kilometres of airports.<\/p>\n<p>Source: <a href=\"https:\/\/publications.parliament.uk\/pa\/cm201719\/cmselect\/cmsctech\/2021\/202107.htm\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">House of Commons Science and Technology Committee<\/a> via <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2019-10-10\/u-k-report-says-helicopters-are-at-highest-risk-from-drones\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Bloomberg<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A new report from the UK\u2019s House of Commons Science and Technology Committee has revealed that helicopters are the most at risk from drones among aircraft due to a number of factors which make them particularly vulnerable. The report comes at a time when the UK, among other countries, is weighing up the pros and cons of different pieces of drone legislation.<\/p>\n<p>According to the latest report, the risk factors for helicopters are three-fold. The British Airline Pilots Association (BALPA) listed them as follows:<\/p>\n<p>\tHelicopters are supremely susceptible to catastrophic damage in the event of a drone strike to any part of the aircraft including the windscreen and main and tail rotors.<br \/>\n\tHelicopters are often required to be flown in dense urban areas or in mission critical scenarios where the margin for error is very small.<br \/>\n\tA large number of helicopter missions are to incidents where there is likely to be an increase in drone activity anyway, such as traffic accidents, police incidents etc.<\/p>\n<p>B..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23894,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mdpair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mdpair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mdpair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mdpair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mdpair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mdpair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23893\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mdpair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mdpair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mdpair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}