I help restore a B-17E, and know how thin the skin is on these, One day someone dropped a bucking bar in the cockpit, it landed on the lower skin and put a hole in it. This was a 1/2 pound block of steel, that fell 3 feet. If you have done any skin repairs, you know what is involved to repair this little hole. Two options, patch it, or replace the entire skin. Really pissed off the owner as he wants this plane to look as it did the day it left Boeing, but he decided that at this point, he has enough time involved with the forward section that he is going to just patch it. Since it is dented, this will be a real chore as we need to flatten it back to match the curve before it can be patched. It happened just aft of the lower hatch under the cockpit so it is right in plain sight. Until you actually work on a plane, you really have no clue just how fragile all the parts are, and it is really amazing how these planes were able to take the beating they did and still return to base.

I also know how jet engines are built, how they function, and what can happen if something fails, though never personally saw one up close. I do know that the blades are sectional on the rotating part, each blade inserts in a slot and are very thin and very sharp. There are a series of these fans rotational and fixed and each set decreases in size to compress the air and speed it up, then it gets injected into the burners where the jet fuel is ignited. The force of the burning fuel pushes against another series of fans, which drives the compressor fans. These fans rotate at very high speeds, and ingesting something solid, even something as small as a screw, can cause serious damage. A birds is flesh and bone, and there will be some damage, but for the most part, the organic matter, flesh and bones will be chewed up and spit out, but something like a drone, with four metal outrunners, hard plastic spine, and large lipo batteries, along with the servos and anything attached to it will cause major damage when ingested by the engine. It can shatter the fan blades, cause an imbalance in the rotational mass, which will cause further damage as the engine shakes itself apart. The smoke from igniting Lipos, would cause the burners to flame out, killing thrust. So if this happened during a take off, it will cause the plane to crash, and chances are, there wont be a river to land in, nor a pilot as quick on the controls as Sulley was. People will die if this happens. This is why the FAA is doing what it did, unfortunately, the actions of a few affect the whole.