The owner arrived over East Midlands Airport last night and ended up in a holding pattern. After some time circling they were about to be diverted to Birmingham when they were allowed to land. He was happy with this, as it saved several hours of extra travel (his car was, of course, at East Midlands).

The reason?

Someone was flying a drone near the airport. Why would anybody do that? Terrorist? Criminal? Journalist? (That’s not necessarily the order in which I see them ranked, it’s just how it came into my head). No, just idiots attending the nearby Download Festival. I won’t add a link because if that’s the sort of idiot it encourages I don’t want to publicise it.

I would withdraw their license to hold the Festival. There’s no point trying to punish individuals, because you won’t catch them. Just punish the organisers. If they want to hold it there again they will have to provide adequate security measures in the form of searches, anti-aircraft guns and signal jamming equipment.

You will probably have gathered from previous posts that I don’t believe holidays are that important, but I do believe that people who are flying, even for trivial reasons, should be protected from death by drone.

Any drones that can be seized should be broken into small pieces and the owners forced to eat them. The real punishment will come a little later as nature takes its course.

It’s probably a good job I never followed a career in the Law. It wouldn’t have been as bad as me being a Diplomat, but it would have landed me in the tabloids a few times.

The pictures I have are the nearest I have to either a drone or an airliner.

Microlight at Sandsend