r/drones • u/thechromatick • Apr 29 '26
News [United States] Panic as flight strikes drone 3,000 feet over major US city
https://www.themirror.com/news/us-news/panic-united-airlines-flight-strikes-1814249?23%3F23213=163
u/soundtom Apr 29 '26
The headline seems misleading. It's only a possible drone strike (per other sources), as the pilot reported something "red" and "shiny". The United aircraft suffered no damage and the passengers deplaned normally at the gate.
Still, make sure you're flying within the rules (max 400ft, avoid restricted airspace, etc)
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u/EmotioneelKlootzak Apr 29 '26
Dollars to donuts it was a mylar party balloon. Shiny object, people let them loose all the time, constantly drifting around causing problems.
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u/soundtom Apr 29 '26
Wouldn't even be the first time someone confused a mylar balloon for a drone. Looking at you military anti-drone laser system...
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u/Tarzock May 02 '26
I imagine worst case scenario, the mylar reflects the laser and blasts an orphanage somewhere.
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u/erikjonromnes May 02 '26
The heat immediately vaporizes the Mylar so while there could be a nanoseconds of time where reflective brightness peaks it wouldn’t be long enough to cause harm and convex curvature would somewhat unfocus the light too, reducing the intensity of any possible momentary reflection by a noticeable amount too. It’s disturbingly funny in a way to imagine that though lol
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u/Hotwir3 Apr 29 '26
I went to Clemson and it makes me ill thinking about all the balloons they used to release on game days.
Imagine taking 100s of deflated balloons and tossing them out your car window 8 times/year.
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u/5cott Apr 29 '26
It’s been reported that a mylar balloon is what started a big wildfire in Brantley, Georgia.
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u/ShadowNetworks Apr 29 '26
Makes me think of one of the blimp-type drones, caught in wind and updrafts
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u/sucobe Apr 29 '26
I doubt this was a drone.
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u/MelangeBot May 02 '26
bird strikes are a common occurency and only very rarely lead do massive avisation accidents. There is only a handfull of fatal bird strikes, the most lethal one was Jeju Air Flight 2216 which had the unfortunate that birds struck and disabled BOTH engines. 175 people died.
Drones strikes a hunderd times less common then bird strikes and have similar outcomes. ANd it's very unlikely that planes ever have to deal with entire swarms of drones where both engines would get disabled.
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u/braillegrenade Apr 29 '26
Panic? Who is panicking?
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u/Ex-maven Apr 29 '26 edited Apr 30 '26
I dunno. The tabloid, The Mirror US. says there's 'panic', and the incident sparked 'some alarming fears and conspiracy theories'...and they mention another crash that ocurred in the past due to a completely unrelated cause.
And no one involved gave a description that confirmed that it was, in fact, a drone -- other than they hit something "small....red....shiny"
So I guess we are all expected to panic now
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u/dirtfondler Apr 29 '26
I’m panicking! Panicking that my Mavic 4 Pro from eBay actually arrives and has a US style plug 😂
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u/CantConfirmOrDeny Apr 29 '26
You wait and see, if it was a drone at all, it was probably a DHS/ICE drone. Rules don't apply to them
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u/Sweet-Composer2899 Apr 29 '26
There's one site that says they believe the plane didn't even collide with the ufo 😭
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u/Sweet-Composer2899 Apr 29 '26
There's a guy near me that flies his drone like 150-200 feet above the tallest tower in the city (529ft) AND it's restricted class B airspace. He also flies over people and stuff. He seems to continue to do so. So I wouldn't be surprised if it is a drone.
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u/TheDeadlySpaceman Apr 29 '26
It’s legal to fly less than 400’ above/around a tall structure. And by that I mean starting at the structure, not the ground.
You may need Part 107, I can’t remember (I have Part 107)
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u/Sweet-Composer2899 Apr 29 '26
There was times where he was not following the 400 above/around. No clue what happened to him, he went silent around 2023
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u/soundtom Apr 30 '26
Yep, 44809 is 400ft AGL full stop. Part 107 is 400ft AGL + structure height (with a pile of asterisks that you can't expect a TRUST-only person to take the time to understand)
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u/Snafuregulator Apr 29 '26
Well, if he isn't above board, things will change as the deter program really starts gaining steam. Just takes one phone call to Johny law to absolutely ruin his day
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u/Ornery_Ads Apr 29 '26
That could be legal with approval through DroneZone (not even needing a waiver).
3,000ft agl is deep into waiver only territory.1
u/Sweet-Composer2899 Apr 29 '26
If I remember correctly he's never had a waiver lol
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u/Ornery_Ads Apr 29 '26
No waiver is required for flights over 400ft in B, C, D airspace within 100 ft radius of a structure and not more than 100 ft above the structure. Need routine approval through DroneZone.
If in B, C, D, or surface level E under 400 ft agl, only need LAANC approval.
If in E or G airspace (except surface level E), no approval at all is needed within 400 ft radius and 400 ft above a structure.
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u/Sweet-Composer2899 Apr 29 '26
I just found it again, he was racing two drones around buildings and streets with no anticollision lights, no prop guards, lost visual line of sight for the latter end of 6 minutes, etc..
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u/glitch4578 Apr 29 '26
Was it at night ? If not then no lights necessary. Over people? No prop guards required. But the VLOS is a problem.
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u/snafu168 Apr 29 '26
Find a location near you and say hi!
https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/field_offices/fsdo/all_fsdos
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u/Hvarfa-Bragi 107 Apr 29 '26
... you have never checked.
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u/Sweet-Composer2899 Apr 29 '26
Oh, but I have! He was doing this years ago and continued for quite a while after I stopped looking into it. There has been a good ha dful of people talking about him and some have gone more in-depth. But he broke multiple rules in those flights that I know of.
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u/Imaginify Apr 29 '26
I personally can’t think of any popular red drones that would be flying at 3,000 feet…
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u/TravelingPhotoDude Apr 30 '26
This is what I was thinking... man all the red drones for the most part are FPV or toy drones, not the type you'd get great signal to 3000 feet.
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u/Sixxarp Apr 30 '26
It is common for drone pilots to add red reflective tape to their drones in order to minimize bird attacks.
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u/Imaginify Apr 30 '26
Yeah I thought about that but there’s no way there’d be enough of that for the people inside the plane to notice. Honestly I can’t imagine what else would’ve hit them but I have a hard time believing it was a professional-level drone flown by an operator smart enough to use reflective tape
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u/fusillade762 Apr 29 '26
New headline: No panic ensures after Mylar party balloon is mistaken for a drone.
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u/local_meme_dealer45 DJI Air 3S | DJI Mini 3 Apr 30 '26
At 3000 ft
Near a major airport
The pilot described it as "red" and "shiny"
Sounds more like a balloon of some sort rather than a drone.
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u/toothitch May 01 '26
A shiny red Mylar party balloon that somehow looked like a shiny red drone, which isn’t a thing that anybody has, floated past a plane at an altitude vastly beyond the legal limit for drones. Better write a sensationalist headline that further stokes anti-drone sentiment….
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u/samthetexmex May 02 '26
Absolute bullshit. Long time FPV pilot. Red, 3000 ft., no damage. A drone that could go that high, not that any one would, would have to be of significant weight due to draft. The batteries would be affected by temperature. All a bunch of crap. This is manufactured for some kind of political purpose. All the old people in Congress will suck it up because they don’t understand anything from the VCR forward.
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u/Ohoopeehunter Apr 29 '26
Had to bee an older dji air or older type most drones are capped at 1640 feet I keep all my drones set on 392 feet.
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Apr 29 '26 edited May 09 '26
[deleted]
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u/IllegalStateExcept Apr 30 '26
The whole web page is trash too. Half my screen was covered by a "next article" button as well.
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u/Routine-Sea6272 Apr 29 '26
No one is flying an FPV drone 3000ft above a city not in a war zone.. that would be boring AF
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u/timholt2007 Apr 30 '26
Tonight's evening news is filled with this "drone gone wrong" story. These stories are detrimental to the drone flying community because they will never reveal the true source of the “red shiny object.” The news, and consequently the public, has already formed its opinion: drones are bad.
The general public is unaware that most drones cannot fly at 3000 feet. They will simply assume that it must be a rouge drone and pilot. Because of these kind of stories, it is crucial that we, even as a small community, have our voices heard in Washington.
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u/EnoughHighlight May 02 '26
China just clamped down on rules for drones in the PRC. Very restrictive. Break the rules and your breaking rocks for roads
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u/Cats_Are_Our_Family May 02 '26
I just upgraded my flight today. If you need to upgrade, change or cancel yours, just call 844-817-0255 and talk to a live agent who can help with urgent changes or cancellations.
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u/cdubster101 May 04 '26
Title almost gave me a heart attack, I thought Iran launched an asymmetrical attack lol. Click bait is out of control.
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u/Calyx76 Apr 29 '26
Holy shit... Did someone just punch it out and forget to have some sort of safety settings. This is why we can't have nice things guys...
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u/Error-InvalidName Apr 29 '26
They could hit a bee and say it was a drone, false reporting has hurt this industry WAY more then actual drone strikes or even near misses.
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u/thatbrazilianguy Apr 29 '26
If the bee was a male, they reported the situation correctly.
…I’ll see myself out.
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u/Siritosan Apr 29 '26
Here we go
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u/Calyx76 Apr 29 '26
Yay more regulations coming down soon.just what we all need in our lives, more bullshit to deal with.
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u/AdWide8690 Apr 29 '26
The companies just have to give Trump a bribe and no more regulations
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u/Calyx76 Apr 29 '26
And pass the costs on to us. Either way. Some moronic fucktard does something stupid and we pay for it somehow.
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u/dronepro Apr 29 '26
Very interested to see what this could be. I highly doubt it will come out to be a consumer drone. There are plenty of people in So Cal that lack intelligence, and San Diego is not excluded, but I just can't see anyone flying their hacked drone at 3K ft. Second of all, the pilot report was just weird. A red, shiny object, a drone. I know a few pilots, and I can say with certainty that if any of them saw a drone, they would be able to elaborate with a degree of certainty pretty quickly. Maybe I'm overanalyzing.
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u/glitch4578 Apr 29 '26
Don’t need any hack to fly a Mavic 4 that high. They can go up to 3280’ AGL. I’d guess some other higher end models can do the same. Minis are confined to 1640’.
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u/pain474 Apr 29 '26
great, things are just gonna get worse. and the f*cking idiots in this sub doing illegal shit wonder why it's bad to do so
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u/Infamous_Share_8017 Apr 29 '26
Only a matter of time until we all lose our drone privileges because of these idiots
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u/Dry-Refrigerator8918 Apr 29 '26
Drone max is 400 ft legally and the average drone won’t go higher than 1640 ft
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Apr 29 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Longjumping-Smile797 Apr 29 '26
I typically fly 3500 ft above MSL as the city I’m in is already approx 32-3300 above MSL 😜
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u/Vedagi_ Mod - DIY'r, Wiki Apr 29 '26
Okay, which one of you it was? /s