The head of the Federal Aviation Administration’s unmanned aircraft office has disclosed that an American Airlines regional jet was nearly struck by a small unmanned aircraft in March near Tallahassee Regional Airport. The aircraft was flying at approximately 2,300 feet, well above the ceiling allowed for hobbyist aircraft.

“The airline pilot said that he thought it was so close to his jet that he was sure he had collided with it,” said Jim Williams, manager of the FAA’s Unmanned Aircraft Systems Integration Office during a speech at the Small Unmanned Systems Business Expo in San Francisco yesterday.

In the speech, which has been posted to YouTube, Williams said that the aircraft was a small, fixed-wing airplane with “a camouflage paint job.” An inspection of the passenger jet after landing found that there was no damage, but Williams added that “the risk for a small [unmanned air system] to be injested into a passenger airliner’s engine is very real.” He invoked the “Miracle on the Hudson” episode, where a US Airways Airbus was forced to "land" in the Hudson river after a goose strike took out its engine, saying, “Imagine a metal and plastic aircraft—especially that big lithium battery—going into a high-speed turbine engine. The results could be catastrophic.”

The FAA is still working on regulations to govern unmanned aircraft, including the development of “detect and avoid” system standards for drones that would alert remote pilots or autonomous systems to collision threats with aircraft or other airborne hazards so the land-bound pilots could maneuver away from them. These standards will likely be part of the design and construction standards for most unmanned aircraft.

Aside from design standards, the biggest concern the FAA has is setting standards for how unmanned systems operators fly their aircraft. Williams pointed out the case of Raphael Pirker, who the FAA fined for flying a first-person-view, remote-controlled aircraft to film video for a hospital advertisement. “He flew close to an active heliport, under a pedestrian bridge, and so close to one person that they had to leap out of the way,” Williams said. “After a thorough investigation, the FAA assessed Mr. Pirker a $10,000 penalty for unsafe UAS operation.”

Pirker’s fine was overturned on appeal by a federal administrative judge, who found that the FAA had no existing regulations that applied to Pirker’s aircraft. The FAA has appealed that decision, and Williams said, “The media’s reporting hasn’t always been accurate or helpful on that case”