A drone flew within 25 feet of a jetliner that was moments away from landing at Kennedy Airport — posing a potentially “catastrophic” threat to the plane and its passengers, sources told The Post on Monday.
The terrifyingly close call came at about 6 p.m. Sunday, when the pilot of Shuttle Airways Flight 5911, arriving from Richmond, Va., spotted a black, four-rotor “quadcopter” off his left wing as he approached the runway at roughly 100 mph. The jet was a mere 15 feet from touching down on the runway.
“That stage of the flight is so important, and a strike has the potential to be catastrophic,” noted Harrison Wolf of the Aviation Safety and Security Program, a think tank based at the University of Southern California.
“If the drone were to hit the cockpit window and blind the pilot, or if it hit the plane, hit an engine, it could unbalance the plane, and the pilot could lose control.
“In that takeoff and landing period, you are at a very stressful time of the flight, and it’s an anomalous event that you haven’t trained for,” Wolf said.
“That’s why unmanned aircraft are not supposed to be anywhere near an airport.”
But despite federal aviation restrictions banning drones from within five miles of airports, Sunday’s device was the third seen illegally flying around Kennedy in as many days.
The blatant flouting of the rule was so egregious over the weekend that Homeland Security issued a statement warning law-enforcement agencies to remember that drones could be armed and used in terror attacks.
“While many of these encounters are not malicious in nature, they underscore potential security vulnerabilities . . . that could be used by adversaries to leverage [drones] as part of an attack,” the report said.
A law-enforcement source said Sunday’s incident highlights the dangerous security breach.
“This is not a threat where they were 2,000 or 3,000 feet in the air. The pilot was landing the airplane, and [the drone] violated airspace in an extraordinarily sensitive location,’’ the source said.
“That’s a serious encroachment on the runway with the potential of untold tragedy. This is quite the penetration of JFK airspace.”
It was not immediately clear how many passengers were aboard the jet, which has a seating capacity of 50.
The FAA and Port Authority cops are investigating.