RAF Brize Norton issues reminder to Oxfordshire drone users
RAF Brize Norton has reminded drone users not to fly into restricted airspace without permission, after recent tech changes.
RAF Brize Norton located in Oxfordshire is the largest station of the Royal Air Force responsible for dispatching troops and aid worldwide.
Following recent changes to Geofencing laws, Brize Norton staff spoke to us the knock on effects of drones entering their air space without permission.
Geofencing is technology that constructs a virtually bounded geographic area and identifies all users present within that space. But DJI, is a Chinese technology company who make drones, announced in January they would remove the majority of its drone geofencing restrictions in the UK and throughout Europe.
They do urge drone pilots to abide by local drone rules and regulations.
Speaking about the changes Flight lieutenant Jamie Bennell who works as a station security officer said: "If your drone is registered with DJI previously that drone would have stopped itself from being able to fly into the air space.
"Now it's down to the user to apply common sense, based off information fed to them through the app that tells them they are encroaching on a restricted area."
We also spoke with Flight Lieutenant Ben Holmes who oversees safety and risk management about the impact drones flying into Brize Norton air space could have on operations.
"The problem occurs when somebody who knows they shouldn't fly here, does so anyway for the sake of some good shots.
"But when that happens procedures have to be put in place to make sure that the drone is removed and that incurs unnecessary risk to the inbound and outbound aircraft as well as the cargo that's on board.
"The cargo could be anything from blankets to food or humanitarian aid.
"The consequences of flying a drone where you shouldn't are financial and timely, the finances come out of the tax payers pocket and it takes a vast amount of time to replace parts and get planes back up to standard."
One of the biggest problems with drones is due to there size they are incredibly difficult to spot and don't always show up on radar.
We spoke to Flight lieutenant Sophie Haston who works in air traffic control about this and the risks involved.
"If people don't tell us drones are in our airspace, we often don't know they're there.
"Due to their size they're incredibly difficult to spot and that can be just as dangerous to a plane as say a bird strike."