A report has revealed that the incident happened as the B737 plane – believed to have been operated by Jet2 – was at a height of between 300ft and 500ft
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An airliner came so close to hitting a drone that the pilot ducked because he feared it would smash through his cockpit window, a report has revealed.
The terrifying near-miss happened as the B737 plane – believed to have been operated by Jet2 – was at a height of between 300ft and 500ft while coming in to land at Leeds Bradford Airport.
The jet carrying up to 189 passengers on a flight from Faro, Portugal, was reportedly left ‘unstable’ in the crucial moments before landing as it missed the device by less than 10ft while flying at around 200mph.
As a result, the shaken pilots told air traffic controllers that they were abandoning their landing and flying back up to 4,000ft so they could turn around and attempt another approach.
The illegally flown drone was apparently not seen again and the plane landed safely, according to the report by the UK Airprox Board which investigates near misses involving aircraft.
The report rated the close call as the most serious type of Category A incident where there had been a serious risk of collision and ‘providence had played a major part’ in the plane missing the drone at 2.45pm on August 28 this year.
Engineers who examined the plane after it landed found no sign of damage, indicating that it had not hit the drone. It is believed that the drone operator was never traced.
The incident happened on the flight path around a mile from the airport’s runway in an area near the Old Ball pub at Horsforth, West Yorkshire.
It is one of the closest ever recorded near misses between a drone and an airliner in UK airspace.
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