anyone who has been flying a drone illegally in Ontario beware! Because of some numpty buzzing a Porter Airlines plane on it’s inbound to Billy Bishop Airport today, enforcement efforts are likely to skyrocket.
Pilot of passenger jet forced toput the aircraft into a steep DIVE to avoid a ‘UFO’ that was ‘too high to be adrone’ in emergency over Canada that injured two cabin crew
The near-miss yesterday has been officially put down to aUAV, an unmanned aerial vehicle.
But one commercialpilot said on social media: 'A drone at 9,000ft? I don’t think so.'
‘Twenty years ago, a pilot seeing something unexpected mighthave reported a UFO, today it’s a drone, but a drone a 9000ft, hmmm,’ saidanother.
The strange incident happened as Porter Airlines Dash-8turboprop plane from Ottawa was coming in to land in Toronto.
He told the Toronto Star: 'Nobody knows at this point (what it was).It happened so quick. We’ve got our work cut out trying to figure out whatthis unidentified flying object was. What did they encounter?
‘It definitely wasn’t a bird. It was a fairly large object.’
Not the first time: Canadians spotted this UFO in 2013
Problem solved:
Now Transport-Canada are looking into whether Benny had a license to fly his lego spaceship within the atmosphere! 
New drone regulations bound to be harsh because of it.
By Bruce Campion-SmithOttawa Bureau
Wed., Nov. 23, 2016
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OTTAWA—Federal safety investigators have been unable to identify the mystery object that prompted the pilots of a Porter Airlines flight to take evasive action over Lake Ontario.
The Transportation Safety Board of Canada has all but ruled out a drone, saying the description provided by the pilots doesn’t appear to match any drone on the market.
While still classifying the Nov. 14 incident as a close call, the board has decided not to proceed with an investigation that would produce a formal report.
“This incident will remain identified as a near collision with an unidentified airborne object,” agency spokesperson Karine Eyamie told the Star.
“The description and size of the object does not match any known commercial or consumer available unmanned aerial vehicle,” she said.
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The Porter Dash 8 turboprop aircraft was over Lake Ontario en route to Toronto when the pilots put their plane into a sudden dive to avoid a mid-air collision with an unidentified object. The manoeuvre caused minor injuries to two flight attendants.
A safety board investigator had previously told the Star that the plane was on a collision course with the object and that the pilots had just seconds to react.
The pilots initially suspected the object was a balloon but later thought it might have been a drone.
However, the location of the incident — some 3,000 metres above Lake Ontario, far from shore — raised questions whether it could have been a drone
Trump drone spying on Americans going across the border .
There was a report last year that the USA had been using drones In the Detroit area for some time The river there is not very wide .
SIERRA VISTA, Ariz. – The U.S. government now patrols nearlyhalf the Mexican border by drones alone in a largely unheralded shift tocontrol desolate stretches where there are no agents, camera towers, groundsensors or fences, and it plans to expand the strategy to the Canadian border.
It represents a significant departure from a decades-oldapproach that emphasizes boots on the ground and fences. Since 2000, the numberof Border Patrol agents on the 1,954-mile border more than doubled to surpass18,000 and fencing multiplied nine times to 700 miles.
Under the new approach, Predator Bs sweep remote mountains,canyons and rivers with a high-resolution video camera and return within threedays for another video in the same spot, two officials with direct knowledge ofthe effort said on condition of anonymity because details have not been madepublic.
The two videos are then overlaid for analysts who usesophisticated software to identify tiny changes – perhaps the tracks of afarmer or cows, perhaps those of immigrants who entered the country illegallyor a drug-laden Hummer, they said.
About 92 per cent of drone missions have shown no change interrain, but the others raised enough questions to dispatch agents to determineif someone got away, sometimes by helicopter because the area is so remote. Theagents look for any sign of human activity – footprints, broken twigs, trash.
About 4 per cent of missions have been false alarms, liketracks of livestock or farmers, and about 2 per cent are inconclusive. Theremaining 2 per cent offer evidence of illegal crossings from Mexico, whichtypically results in ground sensors being planted for closer monitoring.
The government has operated about 10,000 drone flights underthe strategy, known internally as “change detection,” since it began in March2013. The flights currently cover about 900 miles, much of it in Texas, and areexpected to expand to the Canadian border by the end of 2015.
The purpose is to assign agents where illegal activity ishighest, said R. Gil Kerlikowske, commissioner of Customs and Border Protection,the Border Patrol’s parent agency, which operates nine unmanned aircraft acrossthe country.
“You have finite resources,” he said in an interview. “Ifyou can look at some very rugged terrain (and) you can see there’s not traffic,whether it’s tire tracks or clothing being abandoned or anything else, you wantto deploy your resources to where you have a greater risk, a greater threat.”
If the video shows the terrain unchanged, Border PatrolChief Michael Fisher calls it “proving the negative” – showing there isn’tanything illegal happening there and therefore no need for agents and fences.
The strategy was launched without fanfare and expanded at atime when President Barack Obama prepares to issue an executive order by theend of this year to reduce deportations and enhance border security.
Rep. Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican who chairs the HouseHomeland Security Committee, applauded the approach while saying thatsurveillance gaps still remain. “We can no longer focus only on static defencessuch as fences and fixed (camera) towers,” he said.
Sen. Bob Corker, a Tennessee Republican who co-authoredlegislation last year to add 20,000 Border Patrol agents and 350 miles offencing to the southwest border, said, “If there are better ways of ensuringthe border is secure, I am certainly open to considering those options.”
Border missions fly out of Sierra Vista, home of the U.S.Army Intelligence Center at Fort Huachuca, or Corpus Christi, Texas. Theypatrol at altitudes between 19,000 at 28,000 feet and between 25 and 60 milesof the border.
The first step is for Border Patrol sector chiefs toidentify areas that are least likely to attract smugglers, typically far fromtowns and roads. Analysts scour the drone videos at operations centres in GrandForks, North Dakota; Riverside, California; and Sierra Vista. After an initialsurvey, the drones return within a week for another sweep.
Privacy advocates have raised concerns about drones sinceCustoms and Border Protection introduced them in 2006, saying there ispotential to monitor innocent people under no suspicion. Lothar Eckardt, theagency’s executive director of national air security operations, saidlaw-abiding people shouldn’t worry and that cameras are unable to capturedetails like license plate numbers and faces on the ground.
Eckardt looked on one September morning as a drone taxieddown a runway in Sierra Vista, lifted off with a muffled buzz, and disappearedover a rocky mountain range into a blue Arizona sky. About a dozen computerscreens line the wall of their trailer, showing the weather, maps and real-timeimages of the ground below.
Eckardt said there is “no silver bullet” to border securitybut that using drones in highly remote areas is part of the overall effort. Ifthere’s nothing there, he said, “Let’s not waste the manpower here. Let’s focusour efforts someplace else, where they’re needed.”
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Spagat reported from San Diego.
© 2014 The Canadian Press
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While the new full regulations are under review (we are expecting a release in the Gazette within the next 3 months) the old SFOC exemption dealing passed on Dec. 22nd, 2016. As usual with these things the exemption deadline was extended until 31st December 2019. Transport-Canada did however make some changes to the exemption wording which allow enforcement of the regulations much easier. We have an extensive post for anyone who is thinking of getting a drone for Christmas or in the Boxing Day sales. http://www.ontarioachi.ca/new-drone-regulations-effect-canada/