A drone passed within 300 feet of a commercial airliner on final approach to San Francisco International Airport late last year – so close that pilots said there was no time to react. It was one of several alarming close encounters in recent months between drones and passenger aircraft, raising renewed concerns over the growing threat of UAS in controlled airspace.
In another incident near Miami International Airport, a jetliner at 4,000 feet reported a “close encounter” with a drone. Just weeks earlier, a departing flight from Newark narrowly avoided a collision when a quadcopter came within 50 feet of its left wing.
All three cases were classified as “near midair collisions,” a category reserved for the most serious close calls. Experts warn that even a small drone could cause catastrophic damage if it struck a jet engine, cockpit or control surface during flight.
These are not isolated events. According to an Associated Press analysis of NASA’s Aviation Safety Reporting System, drones accounted for nearly two-thirds of all near midair collisions involving commercial flights at the nation’s 30 busiest airports last year – the highest rate since 2020.
Over the past decade, drones were involved in 51% of all reported near misses – 122 out of 240 incidents – with the spike beginning in 2015 as consumer drone use surged.
“The threat has become far more acute,” said William Waldock, professor of safety science at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. “You can buy a drone online that reaches altitudes where it has no business being, and many recreational users simply don’t know the rules.”
The risk is greatest near airports, where drone flight paths overlap with those of commercial aircraft during takeoff and landing. Despite FAA rules prohibiting drone flights near airports without authorization, enforcement remains a challenge.
The FAA estimates more than a million drones are currently in use across the U.S. It requires registration for drones over 250 grams and mandates remote identification via radio transponders, but compliance is uneven and difficult to verify in real time.
Hannah Thach, executive director of the Alliance for System Safety of UAS through Research Excellence, acknowledged the urgency:
“We all know additional changes need to be made to allow the airports to go out and detect and mitigate where necessary,” she said.
The FAA has begun testing counter-drone systems – including signal jammers, GPS interference and even high-powered microwaves or lasers – but full deployment remains years away.
Experts have called for tougher measures, including mandatory geofencing to prevent drones from entering restricted airspace. DJI, the world’s largest drone manufacturer, used such software-based barriers until this year, when it replaced them with a pilot alert system after struggling to process millions of override requests.
“We had around-the-clock service, but it became unmanageable,” said Adam Welsh, head of global policy at DJI. “Without a mandate requiring geofencing, we couldn’t continue.”
Meanwhile, enforcement efforts have begun to show results. In December, Boston police arrested two men for flying a drone dangerously close to Logan International Airport. They were tracked using the device’s transponder signal. In January, a drone collided with a firefighting plane in Southern California, damaging the aircraft and grounding it for several days. The drone’s pilot later pleaded guilty to a federal charge.
Still, such prosecutions are rare, and aviation experts argue that consistent enforcement is essential to prevent tragedy.
