Drone flown near KLIA causes stir
Purported aerial drone photographs of aircrafts landing at Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) caused a stir on Facebook, with netizens fearing that it could lead to another aviation disaster.
The images were apparently uploaded to the social media site Instagram at least three months ago by a user under the pseudonym ‘yengnasir’ who apparently defended his actions when asked if this was dangerous.
“It’s far away. The distance was calculated before flight using GPS mode,” he wrote.
The Instagram account has since been closed, but not before screenshots from the account were circulated on Facebook.
One screenshot supposedly shows yengnasir posing with the packaging for a DJI Phantom 2 quadcopter drone — a remotely flown aircraft weighing little over a kilogramme, has four rotors pointing upwards, and a camera mounted underneath.
Malaysian regulations exempt drones under 20 kilograms from stringent requirements, but it is illegal to fly it within 1.5 nautical miles (2.8 kilometres) of an airport’s boundaries without approval from air traffic controllers, including for aerial photography.
(Reporting by Koh Jun Lin)
