They're more dangerous than you think. When doing my private pilot training, I had to be very aware of birds striking the windshield as they do have enough energy in them to cause serious damage. Even passenger jets have issues with them[0], and have been taken down as a result[1]

[0]: http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Plane-Damage-0New-York-...

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Airways_Flight_1549

The point is you don't have a flock of drones. There is usually one drone. I don't see how one drone can shut down two engines.

Only need to shut down (or just damage) one to be a problem. 2.5 lbs of carbon fiber, wires and motors at 100+ MPH would likely be more than enough to destroy a turbofan.

You do not shut down airport if there is bird in the sky.

Well, airports sometimes hire out hawks to keep birds out of the sky, and they intentionally limit the speed of aircraft at altitudes where birds fly. If a multirotor can fly higher than birds (they do), they could pose a significantly greater threat than a flock of birds.

Yes. Yes you do.

http://www.wfaa.com/story/news/local/2015/01/07/plane-strike...

Depending on the type of multi-engine aircraft and configuration, losing an engine can become a critical emergency, even if the other one is still running properly. In those instances, the pilot will shut down the other working engine to keep the plane heading straight, rather than veering the plane in one direction due to the power output on one side.

That was my first thought too but the article says the drone in question had a 4 foot wing span which is pretty large. So it wasn't just some time quad copter in this case.

If it's not a quad copter (drone), then it's model airplane/glider. These are usually are made from balsa and can be broken with a finger.

"Drones" can be fixed-wing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_D-21

Enough with stupid naming. Drone is autonomous, typically military assault aircraft.

Calling quad copters & model airplanes drones is silly.

Wiki redirects drone to UAV. We do not call toy cars vehicles, so why do we call toy planes vehicles?

I agree "drone" has a scary ring to it because we use drones to bomb people.

A bird, which is nice and squishy and falls apart easily, can do serious damage to a plane. Just search on youtube for bird strike, and you'll see lots of smashed windshields, jets losing engines, damaged elevators, etc. Now, add more weight, more density, and more speed, and you can see how this can get to be a real problem.

Your average FPV multirotor is 2.5 lbs of carbon fiber, electronics and motors, and a DC-10's "typical cruise speed" is over 500 mph. The laws of physics aren't on the side of the DC-10 in this case.

There are civil war cannons which fired projectiles with less kenetic energy than that.

It's easy to image that a bird wouldn't do anything to a plane, but that doesn't mean that birdstrike can't bring down airliners.

You might only suffer minor damage but you could also lose an engine or a control surface.

Not if it sucks the drone into the engine.