It never ceases to amaze me the lengths that people will go to be as stupid as possible...
That seems to be particularly true when people get a drone in their hands.
Whether it's crashing their drone into pristine hot springs in Yellowstone National Park, buzzing wildlife with drones and causing them great distress, or spying on people with drones and refusing to stop, some drone pilots have shown little restraint and even less regard for the world around them.
Not that long ago, we reported on a guy that used his drone to record an airliner landing from just 86 meters away.
Now we're reporting on a person that recorded an airliner taking off from a very, very close distance.
In the video above, you can see an Airbus A380, the largest commercial airplane on earth with a capacity of hauling over 500 passengers (up to 850 passengers in an all-economy version), taking off from Plaine Magnien Airport in the Mauritius Islands.
As the behemoth airliner takes off, the drone captures the event from a position that is dangerously close to the plane's flight path. In fact, as you watch the video, you can see the pilot moving the drone closer to the airliner's flight path as it ascends into the sky.
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As Fstoppers reports, the drone is perhaps just 300 feet from the plane's left wing tip as the A380 passes at its closest point.
It is unknown at this time who piloted the drone.
However, the video first surfaced on the Facebook page of Air France A380 captain Thierry Paris, who included with the video a caption that read, “That's what a little crazy guy managed to do with a drone in Mauritius. Hello flight safety!!!”
The video has since been deleted, but obviously not before it was mirrored and used by outlets like us, Fstoppers, and Petapixel as an example of precisely what not to do when piloting a drone.
It's incidents like this (and those I reeled off in the introduction of this article) that will make anti-drone folks foam and the mouth and want to pass tougher regulations on drone flights.
And as a responsible drone pilot myself, it angers me to no end that people do things like this.
As people keep doing stupid things with their drones, the calls for tighter restrictions on the use of drones will only increase.
The problem is that more rules about where and how we can fly drones won't stop dumb people from doing dumb things with their drone. They will simply find new ways to circumvent the law and endanger the safety of others.
I wonder if there's a way to keep drones out of the hands of idiots? Doubtful...