It would depend on the speeds and vectors of both birds. Within 5 miles of an airport, planes typically don't travel at 500mph.. While taking off and landing and flying circuits, their speed is considerably less.
If the plane and the drone are travelling roughly the same direction, then anything short of a direct hit would merely push the drone out of the way - in fact in most cases, the air disturbance surrounding the plane would push the drone aside avoiding a direct hit anyhow and possibly any physical contact at all...
And remember that not all air traffic is an Airbus or 767! There are still a ton of Dash-8's in service and smaller regional jets!
But this doesn't mean that it's not dangerous or that a drone can't be struck by a plane - just that there many possible combinations of vectors and speeds that the 2 aircraft could be traveling - in which no damage would be caused.
And that also doesn't mean that there aren't still many combinations which would result in the destruction of both aircraft - it just means that all collisions are not equal - and that's the only point I was trying to make since it seems that to the media - any collision at all would result in a catastrophe!
While I find myself agreeing with many of your posts, on this one you are off the mark in my opinion.
Firstly, in a hazard analysis one does not look at the best case outcome or consequence. Yes - there are drone/aircraft collision scenarios that do not have a catastrophic outcome, at least for the aircraft, such as a very glancing impact. So what? It might also miss altogether, which carries even lower consequence. What matters, from the perspective of assessing risk and determining how much it needs to be mitigated, is the worst case outcome. How much damage can be caused by such a collision?
Yes - approaching aircraft are traveling slower than 500 mph - typically around 180 kts (207 mph) descending through 2000 ft, down to a landing speed in the region of 150 kts (173 mph). On takeoff, a typical airliner such as a 737 will take off around 150 kts and climb out through 2000 ft at 180 - 200 kts. So, even subtracting the top speed of something like a Phantom (45 mph) we are looking at an impact speed of 140 - 190 mph. In the worst case it would be 210 - 245 mph.
Even though the aircraft are in subsonic flight, there is no cushion of air moving ahead of the airframe that will push aside a 1.5 kg object. Solid objects, even light ones, do not follow streamlines since force is required to change their momentum. You may have noticed that even tiny insects impact your car windshield. The car analogy is worth taking a bit further, since you can probably imagine the kind of damage even a 75 mph collision with a 1.5 kg plastic/metal object would cause. It would destroy the windshield, which is weaker than an aircraft version, and make a serious dent in sheet metal, but probably not penetrate it.
Aircraft windshields are stronger and more impact resistant than car windshields but, in terms of impact, are intended to resist impacts by compliant objects such as birds, rather than brittle/rigid objects such as drones, which will impart a shorter but higher force profile. I'd give one very little chance of surviving intact with a 200 mph Phantom impact. That would be bad.
Airframe damage, other than the windshield, is probably not too much of a safety issue, but may entail significant repair costs.
Engine impacts are the other significant category, since the screens and turbine blades are also designed with bird impact in mind, and have not been tested, as far as I'm aware, with anything like a drone. No doubt such a testing program is underway though, given the number of reported near misses. Ingestion of relatively small runway debris on takeoff has been known to shut down engines, so I would not be optimistic that the results will be good.
So it is pointless to berate the media for focusing on the possible bad outcomes, since those are the outcomes that matter, and the outcomes that have to be planned for. It's the same reason that they don't diligently report every safe aircraft landing, but always report crashes. The reports of this event, when it was believed that it was a collision, also contradict your assertion that the media portrays all collisions as catastrophic since, by definition, they were reporting a non-catastrophic collision.
You can criticize the original report of a collision, but that is not the fault of the media either - they were just reporting on the official information release by the CAA and Met Police. And it doesn't change the fact that operating UAVs in aircraft flight paths is dangerous, so it is reasonable for the media to cover that issue too. At the apparent rate of increase of drone use by less cautious members of the public, collisions will likely occur unless prevented by robust no-fly zone implementation. Hopefully it won't take a catastrophic one to make the point that laughing at pilots for mistaking other objects for drones isn't funny any more.
