Tag Archives: drone

Day 161

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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

No1 Son Has a Bad Day

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He was supposed to fly from Gatwick yesterday. However, he ended up with a daytrip to Brighton whilst waiting for his flight yesterday and today headed off for a weekend in East Anglia. It’s not the Christmas trip to Innsbruck which he had planned, but he’s better off than a lot of people who have had their plans disrupted.

Assuming that this is an eco-protest rather than a terrorist attack or prank, I’m not altogether out of sympathy with the protest, as we are killing the planet with all our travel.

However, a couple of hours would have made the point without wrecking Christmas for thousands of people.

It now seems that airlines and travel insurance companies may be able get away with taking the money and cancelling the flight as it is “an extraordinary event” and not covered by insurance. Nice work if you can get it, but typical of insurance companies and airlines, who never seem to take their responsibilities too seriously.

I’m expecting a major backlash against drones now, and some questions in parliament about the lack of effective action against the drone.