The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is going to have a field day with this one: an unidentified pilot crashed his or her recreational unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) into a Seattle landmark — the Seattle Great Wheel, the largest observation wheel on the West Coast, to be exact — at the city's Central Waterfront district on Nov. 11.
According to eyewitness testimony, employees and pedestrians heard a large thud come from the 175-foot wheel, followed by an object careening from the site and into a nearby patio area. No injuries or damages were reported.
While none of the bystanders near the Ferris wheel caught the actual impact on video, some of the onlookers recorded shorts and shots of the damage the drone crash caused — notably to a plastic table, into which the drone crashed after presumably ricocheting off of one of the wheel's structural beams.
Drone bounced off the great wheel and smashed through a plastic table pic.twitter.com/TmMvVAmLEJ
— Henry Rosoff (@HenryKIRO7) November 12, 2015
Additionally, Seattle's local news station KIRO 7 has reported that the UAV was purportedly a quadcopter.
JUST IN: pic of the drone that hit the great wheel provided by great wheel staff pic.twitter.com/QeXbwP3NoK
— Henry Rosoff (@HenryKIRO7) November 12, 2015
Currently, the FAA prohibits recreational UAVs (classified as "model aircraft") from flying "near people or stadiums" and from behavior that would endanger the lives of nearby people or other aircraft.
Via: Engadget
Photo: Torrin Maynard | Flickr
