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So, will the truth be known widely or will the broader population remember only the drone accusation? Cynic in me thinks this was deliberately suggested to make passing some drone laws easier.
Came here to say pretty much the same thing. It's a familiar old pattern:

1: "Thing" is developed which enjoys benign use amongst small subset of geeks

2: Military discover "Thing" and develop a way to use it for evil and/or killing

3: "Thing" gains in popularity amongst general public

4: Government says. "General public can't be trusted with "Thing". Thing is capable of doing evil and/or killing people!"

5: News stories start appearing: ""Thing" could be used by 'Terrists' and 'Paedos', warns expert"

6: "Thing" restricted or outlawed —in response to "public concerns"

Rinse and repeat...

I think in this case the story is different.

People have been flying models for a long time. But originally, model planes, etc. were expensive and relatively hard to fly. So people often knew each other and could have a mostly self-policing community.

Then quadcopter were made to be very easy to fly, and popularity made them cheap.

So now we have people flying them everywhere. Quads with cameras make people nervous. Quads flying over large groups of people, make people nervous. And quads flying very close to planes is just a very bad idea.

So it makes sense to have some rules. But governments go completely over board. And instead of investing in enforcement, they introduce painful administrative requirements.

1: "Thing" is developed which enjoys benign use amongst small subset of geeks

2: Military discover "Thing" and develop a way to use it for evil and/or killing

That ordering is not correct.

... warns "expert"

My issue with these stories, is that there generally is no go-to organisation for the new "Thing", so all the news articles end up quoting 'Jim , the self proclaimed expert on Thing"'

The response from their Transport Minister 7 days ago seems fairly sane to me: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/21/drone-believed-to...
Again, the problem is the initial unfounded reporting. This is why people who have been accused of heinous crimes without proof or conclusive investigation, because the town people were looking for an easy to identify perpetrator, have a hard time later being treated the same as before the accusation. It's what stays in the minds of most people that's the harm.
The broader population will only remember the drone accusation.

A drone maybe hitting a plane is far more interesting and sensationalist than a drone not hitting a plane. There are thousands of instances every day where drones don't hit planes.

That's just how the human psyche/news in general works. You can't accuse the BBC of not reporting the updated news. Some shadier outlets might choose not to however.

I do blame news outlets going for sensational news rather than factual statements.

This is real journalism:

"Flight X234 had to emergency land due to a collision with an unidentified object right after takeoff. It is not unusual to hit birds or other objects, but at at this time we don't know what it was."

This is pimping news for money: "OMG, terrorist drone bought at 7/11 was navigated by attackers into plane to kill citizens."

Why is libel misused to silence people, while so-called journalists can lie?

This is the identical thing that will make adoption of self-driving cars difficult on a broad scale. Thousands of human-caused accidents and deaths, but the first person to die in a self-driving car (even if it's not that car's fault) will be devastating to rollout.
It's been in a prominent position on the front page of BBC news all morning - not sure how much more exposure you can give it really?
It's that people will only remember the sensationalist news. That's why it must be a requirement to only report what is factually proven or otherwise just say "planed had to land, reason unknown".
Everybody still thinks that Apple gathered a ton of gold while recycling iPhones. You'll be hearing about it in bars for 10 years. What scrupulous recyclers they are! iDevices are probably good for the environment.

The only reason hobby helicopters are called "drones" now is because the U.S. uses drones to kill people, and people had a problem with that - so now everything is a drone. I guess the next step is to ban hobby helicopters, closing the circle.

I have a lot of mixed feelings about multi-rotor and hobby aircraft regulation. Part of me looks at all the idiots out there and goes: "okay, that's fair." But then it impacts responsible flyers and isn't consistent with some existing case law and even the US Constitution. In my state they've enacted a law that makes it illegal to film, then post video on YouTube from a multi-rotor and have all but made it illegal to fly them over private property without permission. Meanwhile, balloons! Balloonists can do whatever they want and no one is calling them out on the crazy irresponsible stuff they do. In fact, court cases dating back nearly 200 years supports their use of the air for all purposes. Yes, you might go "ha, ha", Patch is a funny guy, irresponsible balloonists, right!" but I'm serious. On April 17th of just this year we had a balloonist come quite literally inches away from hitting our neighbors house. Do you think anyone at the FAA even cared? Do you think it made the news? Nope. Below is a photo I snapped of the incident as I ran out the door to what I thought was going to be a pretty nasty ballooning accident.

Throughout the centuries, owning a balloon has been something for the rich, for people who could afford good lawyers and build case law that favors nearly unrestricted flight by way of comparison to drone 'rules' being enacted. The problem with multi-rotors, is that any idiot without a lot of money can buy one, do something stupid, then be at the mercy of a public defender when they go to court. Since there are literally millions of people out there who can afford a multi-rotor but can't afford to defend themselves in court, the future isn't bright when it comes to being able to step out your door and fly a multi-rotor.

https://scontent-sea1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xfp1/v/t1.0-9/1...

What state, and it explicitly states any video you take with a drone cannot be uploaded to the internet?
No one should be able to fly a drone anywhere near an airport. If the law doesn't exist it should anyway. This also isn't the first time this has happened / been claimed to happen.
The problem I see in The Netherlands is that rules prohibit flying close the airports already for a very long time. People violate those rules. New regulation is introduced to make the rules more strict.

It doesn't affect me personally at the moment, but many other types of model flying become very hard. And the people violating the rules, mostly don't know them anyhow, so keep violating the rules.

My objection is that the first explanation was that it's a drone. It's fear mongering, like accusing citizens from a specific settlement as likely perpetrators.
I think the problem is that drones are very accessible for the general public, which isn't fully aware of all of the rules that the previous generation of RC aircraft hobbyists is all to aware of (e.g. in order to get a permit to fly with their club in a certain area)
What if they have clearance from the airport and/or control tower?
Laws already exist around flying R/C aircraft. They already have ceiling limits. They already have airspace limits. I live in the US, but the UK has essentially the same laws. In the US they already have registration requirements.

"Drones" are the new UFOs at this point.

You already may not, so there's no need for extra laws to cover that, but this will be used as an excuse to appease the public when pushing an inferior law that limits freedoms a little bit more.
That's more conspiracy theorist, than cynic.
>conspiracy theorist

My favorite conspiracy theory is that the idea of conspiracy theories was subject to a multiple decade long attack by certain government groups to make conspiracy theory equate in popular culture to crack pot theory. Governments benefits when theories like the CIA bringing in drugs or the military doing non-consensual human experimentation on soldiers are classified under the same moniker as the theory that lizard people control the government and aliens exist but the governments of the world cover for them.

But that is just a conspiracy theory.

That's one explanation, but I don't believe in stuff, so it doesn't apply. I've seen time and again how opinions are made via complicated and hidden propaganda. Most of it is subtle and not in your face and the world trained me to be a skeptic, is all.
It's not a conspiracy theory to think that laws are propagandized by tickling authoritarian tendencies. Planes hit birds because they intersect with flocks of birds, because birds have nearly 100% overlap in altitude with all phases of operation of airliners, over land and over water, and because there are hundreds of billions of birds.

To calculate the odds of hitting a drone, you have to divide the odds of a bird strike by population, altitude overlap and by spatial density when a flock of birds vs a single drone is encountered. This is why betting on a drone strike is, currently, a sucker-bet. Anyone who thinks a report of a drone strike is real is way way too credulous and/or biased.

Airplane drone strikes: 0 Airplane turtle strikes: 198

Source: http://mashable.com/2015/12/18/turtles-vs-drones-airplane-hi...

"A small drone helicopter passed within 30ft of the cockpit of an A319 plane while on the approach to Heathrow"

I really dislike the use of the word "drone" here. It really implies something that it's not - in that case it was a helicopter, in most other cases they use that term it's an RC quadcopter.

Unless we're going to start calling everything that's RC a drone.

'Drone' has become a fad word. But it has a real meaning - an un-manned aerial vehicle. So technically even a model helicopter is a drone. I've resisted using 'drone' carelessly, and always say 'quadcopter' or 'helicopter' or whatever is appropriate.
If "vehicle" does not require cargo capability, even birds are drones. If "vehicle" requires cargo, an RC helicopter (which typically has no cargo) is no drone.
They always feature DJI phantoms as the "example drone" on the beeb - and given that they can fly autonomously, follow waypoints, etc. "drone" is a fair moniker.

Agreed however that not all quadcopters are drones, just as not all drones are quadcopters.

Yes - this is what I'd refer to as a drone, something that can autonomously fly.

It just seems to be being used as a catch all scare mongering term for all RC aircraft though - and given how long they've been around with a perfectly fine track record, it's becoming a bugbear.

So, if it was confirmed this wasn't a drone, why is the BBC still including a list of drone near-misses? Do they still believe they have a point to make, or are they just making excuses?

Furthermore, the other drone incidents involve airplanes at 2000, 2800 and 4000 feet. Those are not hobby drones. Only one of those listed might have been an amateur drone, at 30ft.

Not sure what you call hobby drones. My guess is that with the more expensive hobby quadcopters it should be easy to get way to close to landing planes at 2000 feet. Basically at a busy airport you will have one plane every few minutes taking roughly the same path. So flying close to that path, for example to make video recordings of the landing planes will eventually result in a near miss.
Yeah, maybe my interpretation of what still classifies as "hobby" needs brushing up. I was only thinking of cases where flying the drone is the objective, not of cases where the drone is a tool to further another hobby. So I was automatically discarding altitudes where you'd no longer be able to see the drone.
Two things really changed because of the kind of electronics now available and because of the different community that developed quadcopters.

Electronics make it possible to equip models with cameras and real-time video links, making first person view flying possible and also making it possible to review the video footage you are getting. Electronics also provides those models with various automatic flying modes.

That results in a different community. The goal is no longer being able to pilot a remote controlled model.

The goal is now, using FPV to fly very complex patterns. Fly in woods, fly very far.

Or, use the quadcopter as a tool for filming. Because of the stability of a quadcopter, relative lack of vibrations (compared to a helicopter) and ability to stay at a fix point in the sky (which planes cannot do) they are ideally suited for filming from a position up in the air.

You changed the title to something that is simply not true. Please don't do that.

"Air accident investigators said they had not ruled out a drone but had no evidence to support the suggestion."

Thanks for pointing this out. The submitted title was "BA plane not actually hit by drone after all". Submitters: please use the original title except when it is misleading or linkbait. This is in the HN guidelines:

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The submitted title seems rather more accurate, given that there's no evidence the drone in question existed and there never was. The BBC's title and reporting suffers from the usual unwillingness to admit they were wrong.
Objectively, the probability of it having been an actual drone strike are sub-microscopic. You wouldn't object to a headline like "Man in woods didn't see Yeti after all." The odds are similar.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_hypothesis
"Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait."

(From the submission guidelines.)

It's really a pity when an otherwise neutral piece sees one-sided discussion that polarizes to the opinions of the person submitting the link. I've seen some extremely presumptuous discussions because of this, where 80% of the comments dig into only the [incorrect] title and not the article/facts.

Customized titles should be the exception and not the rule. In truth, HN should really hit the page and grab the <title> and, if it's changed, flag it so that a moderator can vet it.

Planes are hit by drones all the time especially while landing and taking off. Of course they are called birds. Suck a few geese into your engines and you have to land in a river. I doubt a drone is as dangerous as a goose at 200 knots.
Yes, and the damage from birds is large: "Experts say bird strikes...cause an estimated $600 million a year in damage to planes."

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/birds-plane-crashes-arti...

The cost of a single downed passenger plane is ~$1B, while the entire yearly value of the drone market is $50M.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11425782

Even their usage/value of drones were kept fixed, then it could make sense to ban them even if drones only cause one airplane crash per decade. Obviously, this argument fails when you consider future value, but the point is that the numbers are not intuitive.

> while the entire yearly value of the drone market is $50M.

That's purely a total-airframe valuation estimate, excluding revenue being generated by commercial use of drones.

If you want to use that type of valuation then the loss of an A320 ( as reported in the original story ) would be around $98 million.

http://www.airbus.com/presscentre/pressreleases/press-releas...

It's the value of everything in the aircraft. For a drone, that's basically the cost of the drone. For the airliner, it's the $10M per human life.

Apotential ban on drones would allow licenses and exceptions (thereby not destroying much commercial value), so the primary impact of the ban would be the amateur market. And for them, the cost of the device gives a good estimate of the value.

Yes, we could expand our calculation outward and try to capture all the externalities created by those dead people, or the drone, or the irrational fear of drones. But this would have quickly diminishing returns.