The Australian Transport Safety Bureau is investigating an incident which happened at around a thousand feet as a Bell 412 Hunter Rescue helicopter retuned to its Newcastle base on Saturday night.
The ATSB says the crew was forced to take evasive action to avoid a collision as a UAS tracked towards them.
The helicopter’s chief pilot Michael De Winton says a collision with a UAS could have brought the chopper down.
“I mean relative closing speed is pretty frightening when you’re in the helicopter when you don’t know what you’re actually looking at and have no idea of the size,” he said.
“These UAS and these little camera drones weigh quite a weight and if one of those hit the helicopter we could have some serious problems.”
Mr De Winton says it gave the crew a fright.
“The momentum of two items at that speed will do some serious damage and could potentially bring the helicopter down as well so you know we are very wary of things like that.
“It’s more concerning particularly at night when we have really no reference or clues as to where they are.”
Meanwhile, the ATSB is also investigating an incident involving a hot air balloon drifting into controlled airspace at Maitland.
Source: ABC
This incident marks the thin edge of a very serious problem in Australia, where there is a clear pathway to facilitate civil operations yet CASA, the national air safety regulator, openly admits to the national Parliament as recent as February 28 that there are at least six illegal operators for every certified operator, and probably more. The very social licence that allows responsible UAS operators to seek to develop a stable commercial business is directly undermined by this problem. What Australia chooses to do next, whether hard regulatory enforcement or ‘soft’ appeasement, has global consequences given Australia’s status as a precedent nation. In turn that level of responsibility requires some very hard decisions by Australian authorities. Get it wrong and there is the risk of direct loss of human life and shock waves that flow across the world.