Fanshawe students innovate drone runway inspection at London International Airport

It wasn’t a bird. It wasn’t a plane. 

A drone hovering about 30 metres above ground Tuesday morning performed a runway inspection for the first time at the London International Airport – a pilot project launched in partnership with Fanshawe College.

“It’s really rewarding. I’m really glad I’m here,” said Breno Alvarenga, who dreamed up the idea while he was a student at Fanshawe’s Norton Wolf School of Aviation and Aerospace Technology in 2020. “Now we are seeing it happening.”

Nearly two kilometres of runway was closed for the morning while a team of students and faculty from Fanshawe and Rosor, a drone inspection company, collected real-time data for safety auditing such as cracks, buckling or sloping in the pavement. 

“This is something that was built inside a classroom and now it’s here in the real world. It…