Toronto CA: Drone? Balloon? What made this plane suddenly drop?

I was on that flight? My colleague and I were flying in from Ottawa when yes a sudden violent drop happened, and later the pilot came on and said it was a balloon? I'm not surprsied of an injury because it was definitely a jolt almost hitting our heads on the roof, even with our seatbels. Doesn't surprise me at all!

A comment made here on the Ottawa Citizen website reporting of a near collision and sudden evasive menuevers by the pilots on a Dash-8 Turbo-propeller passenger aircraft.

According to the pilot shortly after the sudden drop they made an announcement on the plane admitting they had a close call with a balloon.
This was reported over a week ago, but recently something strange has come up here in my own local Toronto news, radio, television, and even international attention saying the incident happened at nearly 35km from shore, and over 9000ft in the air.
No drone that is not military or government controlled has these sort of specifications to be sold or have been sold to private or civilian people.

Reporting from CityNews:

The TSB noted that the incident occurred too far from shore and too high for the object to be a drone. The Dash 8 Porter aircraft with 54 passengers was flying at just under 3,000 metres over Lake Ontario at 7:30 a.m. and was about 55 kilometres from Toronto’s island airport when the near miss occurred. The TSB said it will not file a full, public report on the incident. It will, however, add a summary of the facts of the case to its database for statistical internal analysis.

And finally, the incident has been 'closed' as of now stating that it was indeed and will for probably a very long time a UFO.

"What we do know," Krepski says, "is that the description and size of the object does not match any known commercial or consumer unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV. The occurrence location, which is 10 miles from the shore at 8,300 feet is beyond the range capabilities of most commercial and consumer level UAVs." Krepski says if further information comes to light they'll assess it and see if any further action on the TSB's part is warranted. "We weren't able to positively identify the object, so for now it's a closed event," Krepski says. "But if something comes up in the future, we'll take a look at it."

580CFRA

This sounds like Mulder and Scully type stuff.

a reply to: strongfp

According to this, it is possible to fly drones that high.

popular mechanics

a reply to: intrptr

Guessed you missed the part where it was almost 50 miles off shore at 9000ft... over a lake.

originally posted by: strongfp
a reply to: intrptr

Guessed you missed the part where it was almost 50 miles off shore at 9000ft... over a lake.

How can something be 50 miles off shore over a lake? Lakes are in the middle of oceans? off shore of what? I'm confused, granted I'm very tired from a long week...haha

a reply to: jhn7537
Lake Ontario is one of the Great Lakes. They are basically inland seas.

originally posted by: jhn7537

originally posted by: strongfp
a reply to: intrptr

Guessed you missed the part where it was almost 50 miles off shore at 9000ft... over a lake.

How can something be 50 miles off shore over a lake? Lakes are in the middle of oceans? off shore of what? I'm confused, granted I'm very tired from a long week...haha

Off shore of lake Ontario, a rather large lake.

a reply to: jhn7537

Those are Canadian miles. They call "lake" the ocean.

If you don't believe me try their bacon.

If I recall Lake Ontario is less than 30 miles wide. But yeah not a civilian drone.

a reply to: Trueman

There are no Canadian miles. We go by kilometres and the Great Lakes are big... I know because I've sailed on them, often 10 nautical miles offshore.

Lake Ontario is 193 miles / 311 km long and 53 miles / 85 km wide.

originally posted by: mikell
If I recall Lake Ontario is less than 30 miles wide. But yeah not a civilian drone.

Well, they are rather large lakes.
And I guess depending on where you are starting off, length of width, if it's length wise (which in this case I am guessing since it was coming from East to west) it's well over 50 miles, width, it's just over 50 miles. Just to confirm.

You state in your thread that, "No drone that is not military or government controlled has these sort of specifications to be sold or have been sold to private or civilian people." Yet on the Ottawa Citizen website, it states it could've been a "rogue" drone:

Williams said if it was a drone, it may have gone “rogue” and been malfunctioning. It would not be the first time commercial airlines have had close calls with drones. NORAD scrambled a pair of CF-18 fighter jets in May after a large, unidentified drone was spotted near the flight paths of commercial passenger planes landing at the Ottawa airport. The two fighters from CFB Bagotville were sent to Ottawa after a WestJet pilot noticed the drone flying at about 6,700 feet at about 4:45 p.m. on May 25. An Air Canada pilot confirmed the drone sighting minutes later. Both flights were arriving at Ottawa from Toronto.

ottawacitizen.com...
There have been other incidents of "rogue" drones causing problems above 1000 ft., so maybe a "rogue" drone escaped radio contact from the operator and rose higher in altitude.

The relative simplicity of quadcopters attracts pilots who have no experience of flying and little of the eye-to-hand coordination or three-dimensional spatial senses required for safe handling. As a result, these baby drones have already been involved in near misses with airplanes. For example, a commuter airplane approaching a British airport at 1,500 feet had to take evasive action to avoid colliding with a drone that got very close to a wing tip. In New York a police helicopter had to take similar evasive action when it spotted a drone at 2,000 feet over the George Washington Bridge. Airline pilots in the U.S. have made hundreds of drone sightings a month near their flight paths.

www.thedailybeast.com...
If this incident was a drone, it must of been released from a boat, but who goes out onto Lake Ontario, in mid November, to fly a drone? I live in Rochester, NY...which is close to Lake Ontario(the lake is nasty to be on this time of year). My guess, is that the pilot got it right, when he stated at first that it looked like a balloon. We all know that there have many instances of "rogue" weather balloons and they are sometimes hard to see by a pilot of an aircraft.

While the odds of a collision with a weather balloon are small, there is some danger, wrote Mitch Mitchell in the May 1, 2009 issue of IFR magazine. Writing about the six-pound rule in FAR 101, Mitchell wrote: “The thinking must have been that we could survive a collision with six pounds in flight. But I’m not so sure.” He also notes that the balloons rise at the rate of approximately 1,000 feet a minute–faster than general aviation airplanes can–and are not easy to see visually or with radar.

weatherjackwilliams.com...
There even was a recent case of a "rogue" weather balloon that had to be shot down by the USAF:

Air Force fighter jets shot down an errant weather balloon over the Arizona desert on Friday, a spokesperson for Luke Air Force Base told The Arizona Republic. “We received a call from NORAD informing us that an unauthorized object had entered Arizona airspace,” said Brigadier General J.B. Harris, commander of the 56th Fighter Wing.

realnewsrightnow.com...
My guess is that it was a weather balloon gone astray.

Well I was in the Coast Guard on Lake Huron but spent many a watch looking at charts bored out of my mind. I knew it was narrow enough to see across if conditions were right so I threw 30 mikes out. 50 miles it gets tough I can see Chicago about once a week from my place on Lake Michigan and it's about 55 miles there.

originally posted by: masqua
a reply to: Trueman

There are no Canadian miles. We go by kilometres and the Great Lakes are big... I know because I've sailed on them, often 10 nautical miles offshore.

Lake Ontario is 193 miles / 311 km long and 53 miles / 85 km wide.

Of course there are Canadian miles, everybody knows that.

Also, in summer all bears wake up from hibernation and gather together in the lakes to take a long leak, giving to the water a salty taste. That's why they call the ocean "lake".

Guessed you missed the part where it was almost 50 miles off shore at 9000ft... over a lake.

Boat

How can something be 50 miles off shore over a lake?

Very big lake

originally posted by: jhn7537

originally posted by: strongfp
a reply to: intrptr

Guessed you missed the part where it was almost 50 miles off shore at 9000ft... over a lake.

How can something be 50 miles off shore over a lake? Lakes are in the middle of oceans? off shore of what? I'm confused, granted I'm very tired from a long week...haha

You live in Chicago and don't know how something can be off shore 50 miles? I guess you haven't been out on the great lake just to the north, or any other of the great lakes in the region.

a reply to: intrptr

That high, yes.
But not that far from land.
The greatest distance any civilian , commercially available drone can travel is 7km. And that is HUGE stretch due to battery life limitations.
I have a $25,000. drone in my living room as I type this, and it only has a 5 km range. Can it fly that far and come back? No. The battery life tops out at 20 minutes.

originally posted by: strongfp
a reply to: intrptr

Guessed you missed the part where it was almost 50 miles off shore at 9000ft... over a lake.

It was 55 km (about 35 m) from the airport, according to the OP. That's due east of Toronto...not "50 miles off shore".
Read the article, people, then engage mouth.

They said on the television news that the pilots reported that it looked like a balloon that was about 10 feet in diameter.

Does that sound like a drone or a UFO?

originally posted by: strongfp

This sounds like Mulder and Scully type stuff.

Well, sure...It's a bit mysterious because they cannot positively identify what it was. However, it sounds as if it could have been a weather balloon -- especially since the pilots described it as a balloon.

a reply to: Soylent Green Is People

You are right.
But It's still good to report and bring awareness to what happened. It was confirmed a UFO. Man made or not.