Someone modified a drone to bypass the electronic fence online. Reporters investigated: "Illegal flying" disturbing the airport is suspected of being a crime.
The invasion of drones disrupted the order of the airport.
Starting at 19:33 on the evening of September 11, all inbound and outbound flights at Tianjin Binhai Airport stopped taking off and landing. In response to the large-scale delays of flights at Tianjin Binhai Airport, at 23:57 that night, the official Weibo account of the Marketing Department of Tianjin Binhai International Airport Co., Ltd., "Tianjin Airport Convenient Flight", released a message saying that the take-off and landing of flights at Tianjin Binhai Airport were affected due to public safety reasons caused by drones. The airport promptly launched the yellow level response of the joint emergency response plan for large-scale flight delays... According to statistics, as of 23:00 on the 11th, a total of 29 flights were delayed, 8 flights were canceled, and another 32 flights were diverted to other airports, disrupting the travel of more than 3,000 passengers.
The next night, flights at Tianjin Binhai Airport were delayed again. The reporter asked Tianjin Binhai International Airport for confirmation, and the airport staff told the reporter: "We have confirmed with the scene that it was due to drone interference."
On the evening of the 12th, flights were delayed again at Tianjin Binhai Airport.
On the evening of the 12th, flights were delayed again at Tianjin Binhai Airport.
This is not the first time that an airport has been disturbed by drones. In February 2017, Kunming Changshui International Airport detected four consecutive drone incidents. In the most serious incident, the drone was only 50-70 meters away from the flying passenger plane. In April of the same year, Chengdu Shuangliu Airport experienced eight drone interference incidents in two weeks, resulting in 114 flights diverted and tens of thousands of passengers stranded. In May 2017, Chongqing Jiangbei International Airport was disturbed by drones, causing more than 40 flights to divert, more than 60 flights to be canceled, more than 140 flights to be delayed, and about 10,000 passengers to be affected. In February 2019, Xi'an Xianyang Airport was disturbed by drones. In nearly five hours, a total of about 40 flights were affected and had to make evasive movements...
A civil aviation practitioner told reporters that collisions between airplanes and drones, like bird strikes, threaten flight safety.
There are strict airspace restrictions for drones, and they cannot take off in no-fly zones such as airports. How do drones break through restrictions? What loopholes do drones have? Is drones intruding on airports suspected of being illegal? In response to netizens' questions, the reporter found that there are indeed people online who provide services for modifying and assembling drones, and the public safety issues of drones deserve attention.
Zhu Peng, general manager of Shanghai Zhifei Aviation Technology Co., Ltd., whose business involves drone training, said that it is rare to find illegal drone flights in the airspace around airports.
He told reporters that common commercial drones have built-in "electronic fence" maps to restrict drones from entering controlled airspace. Under normal circumstances, there are no-fly zones and restricted-fly zones near airports. No-fly zones refer to areas where drones are prohibited from flying. Restricted-fly zones refer to areas where flight altitudes are restricted. Commercially available drones cannot take off in no-fly zones, or even if they are started, the drones will quickly land due to the activation of built-in restriction programs. In restricted-fly zones, after declaring flight activities, drones cannot fly more than 120 meters high. This height calculation method starts from the ground. If you take off from the roof of a 100-meter-high building, you can only rise 20 meters, and the jurisdiction is very strict.
Map of no-fly zones and restricted altitude zones in Tianjin, with red representing no-fly zones and grey representing restricted altitude zones.
However, some drone pilots fly drones to bypass the electronic fence in order to take aerial photos that others cannot take or for other purposes. According to him, some drone enthusiasts buy various accessories to modify and assemble drones. These "hand-assembled" drones often do not have built-in restricted or prohibited flight zone maps, so there is no electronic fence. Another situation is that the "electronic fence" and other restriction programs in the drone are cracked.
The reporter found that many merchants on an online shopping platform who provide drone assembly and modification services are active on the platform. Their service targets drone pilots with specific needs such as speed racing, research and mapping, and special photography. Some merchants also revealed modification methods to the reporter.
In addition to hardware, software may also have vulnerabilities. Misjudgment of the drone's built-in program may also indirectly lead to drone interference and other situations.
Wang Linfeng, a former UAV enterprise solution engineer, pointed out that a certain brand of drones is marked with a signal distance of up to 12 kilometers, but due to factors such as obstructions and electromagnetic interference, the communication distance of the drone will be reduced. In actual situations, the maximum flight distance of the drone may be reduced to 8 kilometers. Once the drone flies out of the control range, there will be signal loss, drone hovering, landing, or automatic straight return. Especially during the return process, the drone pilot cannot manually control the drone before receiving the remote control signal again, which increases the risk of the drone losing control or crossing the prohibited or restricted flight area diagonally. Although the possibility of entering a no-fly zone due to loss of control is small, this technical problem still needs to be taken seriously.
The "Interim Regulations on Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Flight Management" which came into effect on January 1 this year has clearly stipulated that flight activities are prohibited in drone-controlled airspace such as airports without the approval of the air traffic control department.
In February 2021, the police arrested 10 suspects for drone interference at Xining Caojiabao International Airport, of which 6 were detained for public security; in January 2024, the Guangdong police detained and fined two men who interfered with flights at Shaoguan Danxia Airport for ten days. On September 5 this year, the Public Security Management Corps of the Chongqing Municipal Public Security Bureau reported that a man was detained for illegally breaking the "electronic fence" of a drone and flying in the clear air protection zone of Chongqing Jiangbei International Airport.
Wang Junyi, partner of Beijing Lei Teng Law Firm, reminds: If a civilian drone is operated in a controlled airspace in violation of regulations, the public security organ will order it to stop flying or impose a fine; in serious cases, the drone that is flying illegally will be confiscated and fined. At the same time, Chinese law strictly prohibits the use of drones to carry out any behavior that may disrupt public order, endanger the safety of public facilities, or endanger the life and health of others. Using illegal drones to frequently invade airports is a serious violation of the law and is suspected of constituting a crime of endangering public safety by dangerous means. The act of treating cracking programs as a business is suspected of constituting the crime of providing programs and tools for intrusion and illegal control of computer information systems.
With the boom of low-altitude economy, the drone industry is taking off. Wang Linfeng pointed out that to a certain extent, drone interference and illegal flights are a phenomenon in the process of popularizing new drone technologies. Only when the problems are exposed and relevant departments increase supervision can the use of drones be standardized.
Zhu Peng reminded that according to the "Interim Regulations on the Management of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Flights", the current application procedures for flying drones are managed through classification. First, drone pilots must "register their drones with real names", which is equivalent to applying for a driving license for the drone. Then, if it is a small drone and the flight altitude is less than 120 meters, there is no need to apply for airspace and it can be flown in the appropriate airspace; if the flight altitude exceeds 120 meters or involves relevant controlled airspace, drone pilots are required to obtain relevant certificates and need to report the flight airspace to the relevant departments.
Wang Junyi believes that a normally flying drone is a system composed of many modular units and subsystems. From design, production to flight, drones need to meet many licensing and filing requirements, as well as management and technical requirements. Behind the illegal flight of drones, there are often illegal production, assembly, provision of firmware cracking data and programs and other illegal and criminal acts. At the same time, the sudden urgency of illegal drone flights has objectively increased the difficulty of supervision. These industry characteristics also call for regulatory changes, and continue to shift to systematic and normalized multi-departmental coordinated supervision.
