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A United Airlines formation from San Francisco reported a adjacent telephone with a drone arsenic it was approaching to onshore successful San Diego connected Wednesday morning, authorities said.
A United spokesperson said Flight 1980 reported a imaginable drone onslaught conscionable anterior to the plane's accomplishment astatine San Diego International Airport. The formation landed safely, and customers deplaned usually astatine the gate, the spokesperson said.
"Our attraction squad recovered nary harm aft thoroughly inspecting the aircraft," the spokesperson told CBS News.
The Federal Aviation Administration said successful a connection that Flight 1980 was astatine astir 4,000 feet erstwhile the unit told aerial postulation power they believed they saw a drone 1,000 feet beneath them.
"Air postulation power alerted different pilots but did not person immoderate further drone-sighting reports," the connection said.
"I judge I conscionable saw similar a reddish tiny object, similar astir a 1000 feet beneath america to our right," 1 of the United pilots told aerial postulation controllers, according to audio obtained by ATC.com.
The Boeing 737 was carrying 49 passengers and six unit members astatine the time.
Operating drones astir craft and adjacent airports is unsafe and illegal, and drone operators tin look transgression charges and jailhouse time. In addition, FAA rules necessitate backstage drones to enactment beneath 400 feet. According to the FAA, portion drone-aircraft collisions are rare, determination are implicit 100 reports of drone sightings adjacent airports each month, astir are made by pilots.
In 2025, determination were much than 1,850 drone sightings astir airports reported to the FAA, but existent collisions are highly rare.
Last year, a drone collided with a firefighting craft during the Palisades Fire, resulting successful harm that grounded the plane. In 2020, a Los Angeles Police Department chopper struck a drone portion responding to a call, forcing an exigency landing. The drone relation was aboriginal prosecuted, the archetypal transgression lawsuit successful the federation successful which a idiosyncratic was charged with unsafely operating a drone.
In 2017, a drone collided with an Army Blackhawk chopper adjacent Staten Island, New York. No 1 was hurt.
Kris Van Cleave contributed to this report.
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