Originally Posted by
Rob2160
The one thing that gets overlooked in these discussions are the IFR circling areas around airports.
I agree with your numbers for an ILS approach or a visual approach on the PAPI - 3 degrees (IE 300 feet per nautical mile distance from the runway)
But airports can have a variety of instrument approaches and some of these allow for visual circling - The size of the circling area is based on aircraft performance (landing speeds) in 5 categories.
Look at Category E in the following diagram and see how the 4.5 nautical miles (about 5.2 miles) is calculated.
An aircraft circling in this area after an instrument approach could be at 400 feet AGL at 5 miles from the airport.
In other countries these circling areas can be even larger - Eg - Australia - Category D is 5.28 Nautical miles (9.8 kilometres) which means an aircraft can legally be flying at 400 feet nearly 10 kilometres from the runway.
How many drone pilots know that?
Good point; I'd ask "How many RC pilots know that?" There's a fair number of these "drone" reports that are not NOT quads. Yet another reason why a cap on RC Ops at 400' AGL makes abundant sense.
In my mind, that will be the next shoe to drop if there continues to be conflicts. FAA will turn 91-57 from voluntary compliance to mandatory compliance.