Opinion

Drones must face urgent restrictions

The latest alert involving a drone, which resulted in a near miss with an Aer Lingus plane flying from Dublin to Paris earlier this week, was deeply alarming,

Air traffic police were notified that the drone passed within 150m of the Airbus A320, which was at an altitude of 2,000m on its final approach to Charles de Gaulle airport.

It happened just days after a very similar incident resulted in another plane being actually struck above London's Heathrow airport before landing safely.

There is an overwhelming case for binding international measures which carefully restrict the use of drones anywhere in the vicinity of commercial or indeed any other airports.