Completion of comprehensive flight path data analysis to evaluate drone collisions
October 2020 | Performance Analyses
As part of the "Vulnerability of Manned Aircraft to Drone Strikes" project, the British defense and research company QinetiQ is investigating the effects of collisions between mass-market drones and manned civil aircraft on behalf of the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) (see News 07/2020).
For the determination of speed profiles of different aircraft classes (e.g. EASA CS-25 and CS-23 (jets, turboprop and piston engine) as well as helicopters according to CS-27/-29) ADS-B data were provided, covering a period of 30 days and recording altitudes up to FL 120 in German airspace. The several hundred million data points were processed and statistically evaluated, and velocity distributions were modeled for a total of three different scenarios (e.g. depending on meteorological conditions and typical usage conditions).
The speed profiles created by GfL are now used by QinetiQ to define specific collision scenarios in order to assess associated risks.
