A reckless drone pilot risked disaster by trying to take aerial images of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle 's new home in the mi...
A photographer walking in Windsor Great Park took shots of the quad-copter soaring hundreds of yards in the air as flights with thousands of passengers onboard were passing around 300 feet above in preparation for landing.
The drone flew south to north along the line of The Long Walk - the route Harry and Meghan took in a carriage on their wedding day last year - and hovered over Windsor Castle, where drone flights are banned to protect the Queen.
It then returned south down The Long Walk before swerving east and heading directly to Frogmore Cottage before returning south and disappearing.
The flight took place between 5.02pm and 5.08pm, when passenger jets were flying by every two minutes. It comes just months after drone sightings at Gatwick led to more than 1,000 flights being cancelled.
The drone flew south to north along the line of The Long Walk - the route Harry and Meghan took in a carriage on their wedding day last year - and hovered over Windsor Castle
The photographer, who took the images using a long lens, estimated the height of the drone to be more than 980 feet.
The passenger jets were at a height of between 1,300ft and 1,400ft according to a flight tracking website. However, a source at Heathrow said they were at approximately 2,000 and 2,500ft, which would mean they were more than 1,000ft away.
The maximum height a drone can be legally flown, even in an uncontrolled airspace, is 300ft.
The route taken by the drone was within an area of tightly controlled airspace called the London Central Zone.
The gadget was also within five miles of the airport, which is a further controlled zone by law, and near Windsor Castle, which is a banned zone for drone flights. It is also illegal to fly zones within the confines of Windsor Great Park.
Between midday and 7pm on Saturday, this precise area was in the middle of the flight path for all arrivals into Heathrow airport with passenger planes flying through it at low altitude every two minutes.
A passer-by said of the drone flight: 'We were walking along the Long Walk towards Windsor Castle a few hundred meters from the castle.
'The passenger jet flight path switches between times of day and at this time [5pm] arrivals were coming in right over our heads.
'They are always very low. The noise is deafening. There were Boeing 747 jumbo jets and super jumbos [Airbus A380] and others.
'They come about every two minutes and on Saturday that was their flight path all afternoon.
'Then in between the flights we heard the distinctive whirring of a drone overhead. I was quite shocked. It seems like such an obviously dangerous thing to do with the planes coming so low overheard and so regularly right in this area.
'It flew over our heads at about 200 meters up towards Windsor Castle and then went up very high almost out of sight but we could see that it came back towards us then went to the east over to the area where I know Frogmore Cottage is.
'Then it returned to the Long Walk and flew back over our heads and went south out of sight. It was in the air above us for about five or six minutes. In that time, three flights must have come over in the exact same air space and also very low.'
Harry and Meghan only moved in to Frogmore Cottage on Friday after months of renovations.
Meghan, 37, is set to give birth towards the end of this month and will enjoy a slower pace of life away from cameras in their new home in the countryside.
The couple reportedly spent a record £3million renovating their Grade II-listed residence.
The sighting comes amid growing fears about the threat of drones to the safety of UK passenger jets.
Between 19 and 21 December 2018, hundreds of flights were cancelled at Gatwick Airport following reports of drone sightings close to the runway.
The reports caused major disruption, affecting approximately 140,000 passengers and 1,000 flights.
Flights were also suspended for an hour at Heathrow in February.
Thames Valley Police said they had not received any specific reports of drones flying in Windsor Great Part yesterday.
Kensington Palace refused to comment.
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