Drone Incidents

Near-misses, crashes, airspace violations, and arrests — when drone flights go wrong.

235

Articles

Beats covered

Reporters on beat

Sep 25

Last updated

Drone incidents are where the hobby meets consequences, and this desk keeps the record: incursions, crashes, forced-downs and the enforcement that follows.

The recurring worst case is fire season. Spokane’s drone incursions grounded firefighting aircraft 26 times — every grounding a fire burning unfought — and the response escalated to an FBI counter-drone task force forcing hobby drones down over those same fires. The wildfire desk covers the other side: drones as the firefighting tool.

Attribution is getting harder to escape. Cellebrite locked down SkySafe as its only drone-forensics partner, betting big on the counter-drone evidence chain, and the FAA’s DETER program shortened the road from a reported violation to a real penalty.

And half this desk’s job is saying what did not happen: the IISS work separating real Russian drone incidents from phantom ones is the model — incident inflation feeds bad policy as surely as real incidents do. The counter-drone desk tracks the defensive hardware. Every incident story lands in the feed below.

Key facts

What counts as an incident: Airspace incursions, near-misses, crashes, forced-down aircraft and the enforcement that follows
The recurring worst case: Hobby drones over wildfires — Spokane's incursions grounded firefighting aircraft 26 times, then drew an FBI task force
The response curve: Enforcement has sharpened: DETER shortens the road from a reported violation to a penalty
The verification problem: Not every reported drone is a drone — separating documented incidents from panic is half this desk's job

Start here

Drone Pilots Ground Spokane Firefighting Aircraft 26 Times — August 4, 2026
Cellebrite Locks Down SkySafe as Its Only Drone Forensics Partner, Betting Big on Counter-Drone Data — July 8, 2026
IISS Report Names Real Russian Drone Incidents and Phantom Ones, and the Difference Is the Story — July 2, 2026

Last updated September 25, 2026 — the feed below updates with every new story.

Amazon MK30 delivery drone N328PA sitting tail-down in dry grass with a landing wheel extended, outside a brick building in Waco, Texas

Drone Incidents · Amazon

Amazon MK30 Sets Down on a Waco Lawn Days After Baton Rouge

An Amazon MK30 made a precautionary landing on a Waco lawn, wheels out, days after one landed in Baton Rouge. Amazon has not said what triggered it.

Haye KestelooSep 253 min read

Police

Boston Police Drone Wrecks a Parked Car Six Days Into Its DFR Pilot

A BRINC Responder flown by Boston police fell onto a Mazda in Brighton on September 3, less than a week after BPD sold the program on safety.

Haye KestelooSep 19

NASA's SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft rolling out of the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center

Drone Incidents

NASA Kennedy Drone Case: Chinese Tourist Pleads Guilty, Faces a Year

Xiaodong He pleaded guilty over a 12-minute drone flight near Kennedy Space Center. Two earlier cases show what sentencing could look like.

Haye KestelooSep 19

Large quadcopter drone carrying a man suspended in midair

Counter-Drone

Korean Drug Lord's Drone Jailbreak Undone by a Viral Test Flight

Park Wang-yeol planned to fly out of a Philippine prison hanging from a 165-pound-capacity drone. A viral rehearsal clip killed the plot.

Haye KestelooSep 16

A small white consumer camera drone hovering against a clear blue sky

Police

Police Seize Drone in Luton Airport Zone, Make No Arrest

Bedfordshire Police seized a drone inside Luton Airport's restriction zone during a festival, tracked the pilot home, and issued words of advice.

Haye KestelooSep 15

UPS Airlines Airbus A300 N148UP taking off from San Jose International Airport

Drone Incidents

UPS Pilot Reported A Drone At 5,000 Feet. It Was A Bird.

A UPS crew told ATC they hit a drone or balloon at 5,000 feet. UPS confirmed a bird. Why drone is now the first word pilots reach for.

Haye KestelooSep 14

An Amazon Prime Air MK30 delivery drone on a painted outdoor launch pad at a UK site, with a worker in an orange high-visibility vest walking behind it carrying a yellow handling bar.

Drone Delivery

Amazon Made 500 Drone Flights. Now It Wants a Whole UK Town

Amazon asked the CAA to fly Prime Air across all of Darlington after 500 flights, against a permission that already allows 100 deliveries a weekday.

Haye KestelooSep 13

A dense flock of European starlings swirling against a purple dusk sky above a tower

Counter-Drone

NATO Jet Scrambled, Vilnius Airport Closed. It Was a Flock of Birds

A NATO jet scrambled and Vilnius airport shut for 38 minutes over a radar contact that turned out to be birds. Poland made the same call eight days ago.

Haye KestelooSep 13

Frequently asked questions

What happens if you fly a drone over a wildfire?

You ground the aircraft actually fighting the fire — Spokane logged 26 groundings in one season — and increasingly you meet federal enforcement: an FBI counter-drone task force forced down hobby drones over those same fires. 'If you fly, we can't' is policy, not a slogan.

Are drone sightings always real drones?

No, and the record matters: panics have chased aircraft, planets and nothing at all. We report what is documented — forensics, radio evidence, recovered hardware — and label the rest as unverified, because incident inflation feeds bad policy.

What enforcement do reckless pilots actually face?

More than they used to. The FAA's DETER program shortened the path from report to penalty, criminal charges now follow the serious cases, and counter-drone forensics — the Cellebrite-SkySafe partnership, for instance — makes attribution far harder to escape.

Drone Incidents

Key facts

Start here

Frequently asked questions

The drone industry moves fast. Stay ahead of it.