Thank you for that question.
There are a number of technologies to, shall we say, defend ourselves from drones at airports. Geofencing is one method, although my understanding is that it is possible to override the software that essentially creates the geofencing. There's also some technology now that can be installed that monitors airspace for intrusion of drones. Today it's limited to about one kilometre, whereas our approaches reach out to about nine kilometres.
The challenge really isn't with people operating the drones within the regulations. The challenge is the unintentional operation of the drones outside of the regulations. We will see, in the absence of information, people who simply aren't aware that the little park they're standing in is close to the approach for a runway. It's surprising how unaware people are of airplanes. That's one issue.
The greater one, of course, arises when the drone runs away. I don't believe for a minute that someone tried to park this drone on the runway. It just happened to be that this is where it ran out of energy when the batteries ran out. Ultimately, it likely just ran away from someone, and that's the big challenge that I think we need to deal with.
We need to make sure that people are aware, and I think we need to be able to register the drones so that we know who's operating them. We also need to create a non-punitive system so that the operator of a drone knows if, oops, it runs away, to pick up the phone, call Oshawa or a central number in Canada, and say “My drone just ran away” to let you guys know about it.
We know about obstacles in the airspace. We notify pilots. We do it all the time for ground-based cranes, for birds. I think making people aware and making sure we get notification when we have issues is going to do as much as geofencing. There is such a big footprint around an airport that even nine kilometres only begins to deal with the primary air operations.