Drone Pilot Breaks the Law to Get Dangerously Up-Close Footage of Blue Angels
This screenshot shows how dangerously close a drone got to a Blue Angels flyover in Detroit on May 12, 2020.
You may or may not have noticed that as of late, military flyovers are happening all over the country as a way to say thank you to all the first-line workers that are fighting the pandemic.
As a veteran and a pilot, I find these flyovers to be an incredible sight, particularly when they involve the highly-trained Blue Angels.
Earlier this week, folks in Detroit got to see the Blue Angels in action during the America Strong flyover in their city.
In the days since, a video has been circulating online showing footage from a drone that is astonishingly close to the formation of F/A-18 jets.
Since most consumer-grade drones have wide-angle lenses, this isn't a case of being far away and zooming in. Even the Mavic 2 Zoom couldn't capture footage this up-close unless it was too up close.
As you can see in the video (which is a repost by another person, so don't get mad at them for shooting the video), the drone captures several flybys, the last of which makes you gasp it's so close to the jets.
The original video allegedly belongs to Giovanni Lucia (@giolucia), whose Instagram and Facebook accounts have since been taken down.
While this is certainly an "innocent until proven guilty" situation, both Fstoppers and The Aviationist were able to find old social media posts of questionable drone footage of the Detroit area from the same handle. One post from February of 2017 even includes the caption, "might of broken a couple of FAA regulations today."
No charges have been filed, but The Aviationist reports that the Blue Angels and the FAA are aware of the video.
This isn't the first time that a drone has gotten dangerously close to an aircraft, and I'm certain it won't be the last. My question is, when will drone operators like this person finally get it that what they're doing could lead to a major incident and even death?
