An idiot drone pilot risks flying over the disaster by flying over Meghan Markle and Prince Harry's new home in Heathrow's busy flight path

A DRONE pilot risked the disaster by trying to take aerial shots of Prince Harry's new home and Meghan Markle in the middle of Heathrow's flight path.

A photographer from Windsor Great Park spotted a quad-helicopter flying hundreds of meters in the air peeking at Frogmore Cottage in Berkshire.

Rex Features

Between 17:02 and 17:08, the drone flew from south to north along The Long Walk – the route Harry and Meghan took on their wedding day – and flew over Windsor Castle.

He then turned south along The Long Walk and made a detour to the east before heading directly to the royal couple's new home, Frogmore Cottage, before returning south and disappearing.

The photographer, who photographed the drone with a long-range camera, estimated the height of the flying machine at more than 300 meters.

The maximum height at which a drone can be flown legally, even in uncontrolled airspace, is 121 meters.

The route taken by the drone was in very tightly controlled airspace.

It was in what is called the central London area (tightly controlled airspace over the capital), in addition to being located in the middle of the departures and arrivals trajectory at Heathrow.

ROGUE DRONE PILOT

It was also less than five miles from the airport, which is another area controlled by law, and near Windsor Castle, which is a no-go zone for drone flights.

It is also illegal to fly drones within the boundaries of the Windsor Grand Park.

Between noon and 7 pm on Saturday, this particular area was in the middle of the flight path for all arrivals at Heathrow Airport. Pbadenger jets pbaded through it at low altitude every two minutes.

A website dedicated to tracking all flights into and out of international airports showed that at 8:03 on Saturday – right in the middle of the drone flight – EIGHT jet planes were getting ready to get to Heathrow by flying over this exact part of Windsor.

As pbadenger planes pbaded over Frogmore Cottage every two minutes around 5 pm Saturday, their altitude was between 1,300 and 1,400 feet, according to the flight tracking website.

A pbaderby said of the drone's flight: "We were walking along the long walk to Windsor Castle, a few hundred yards from the castle.

"The flight path of the aircraft-pbadenger rotates between the hours of the day and at this time (17h), the arrivals arrived just above us. They are always very low.

"The noise is deafening. There were jumbo jets (Boeing 747) and super jumbos (Airbus A380) and others.

"They come every two minutes or so, and on Saturday, their flight path remained throughout the afternoon, and between flights, we heard the distinctive whistle of a drone.

SNOOPING ON SUSSEXES

"I was very shocked. This seems like a obviously dangerous thing to do with the planes that arrive so low have been heard and are therefore regularly in this area.

"He flew over our heads about 200 feet in height towards Windsor Castle, then climbed high up almost out of sight, but we found that he came back to us, and then Is directed to the east to where Frogmore Cottage is located.

"Then he went back to Long Walk and flew over our heads and went south, out of sight.

"He flew five or six minutes above us. At that time, three flights were to be flown in the same airspace and also very low. "

Harry and Meghan only moved to Frogmore Cottage the night before, Friday, April 5th.

On Saturday, all day long, their new 10-bedroom home was directly under the Heathrow arrival planes from around the world.

Between 19 and 21 December 2018, hundreds of flights were canceled at Gatwick Airport, as a result of reports of drone observations near the runway.

The reports caused major disruptions, affecting approximately 140,000 pbadengers and 1,000 flights.

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