A HIGH risk incident occurred as a drone almost hit a plane at Stansted Airport.

A report has detailed how a small flying drone came within 6.6ft of a Boeing-737 as it came into land at the Essex airport in September.

The report by Airprox details how when coming into land, “a white object believed to be a drone appeared and narrowly avoided hitting the aircraft to the left-hand side of the nose cone.”

The incident happened at around 5.23pm, with the pilot reporting that “a drone passing down the left side of their aircraft whilst they were descending through approximately 2800ft.”

The pilot also added how they “did not know how it did not hit the aircraft.”

The event was rated by Airprox as a Category A incident, which is the most serious of near-misses.

It stated that the risk of collision was high, and that “the whole event happened too quickly for any avoiding action to be taken.”

The incident was reported to Group Supervisor airports, who informed Stansted Tower.

Information on the drone was then passed over to aircraft following in the approach sequence.

There were no further sightings and the aircraft following all landed without incident.