Looking at silver lining in drone failure

Who would not be disappointed to see hundreds of drones being grounded in Hong Kong after thousands took off in Shenzhen to form "impressive" patterns as the nation celebrated the 75th anniversary of the formation of the People's Republic of China?

Questions were raised immediately, asking why Shenzhen was able to stage such a spectacle when the SAR could not.

People were baffled that - if the phenomenon of ionospheric scintillation was so strong that authorities in Hong Kong had to cancel the shows on Monday and Tuesday - Shenzhen was not subject to the same solar impact since the two cities are located so near to each other.

It was timely that a local expert jumped to the defense of the decision, otherwise it could have helped breed various kinds of conspiracy theories - from a sabotage attempt by "external forces" to the inability of the contractor despite the money paid to hire it to perform for this rather important occasion.

Officially, these probabilities have been ruled out by figures in authority.

According to the chairman of a local drone association, the coordinates of each drone involved in a drone show have to be so precise that each machine is allowed to stray by no more than 10 centimeters, otherwise the show would fall apart or drones would collide with each other.

The bad news learned from this lesson is that Hong Kong is also situated in a region that, according to Leung Wing-mo of the Meteorological Society, is exposed to the atmospheric effect that grounded the drone shows.

Had the government not planned to include the drone performances in the National Day celebrations, officials would have likely missed this relevant natural phenomenon as they try to define a role for the city in the country's policy decision to make the low-altitude economy a priority.

In hindsight, this rather unexpected discovery - or realization - may be viewed as a silver lining of the failure.

As officials continue to learn to make the city fly at low altitude, the setback was an episode on the learning curve.

It is also obvious from this episode that officials in Hong Kong and Shenzhen tend to handle situations differently.

As Hong Kong officials exercised caution to avoid accidents by grounding the shows, local authorities in Shenzhen flew the drones above five districts so successfully that even tech giant Elon Musk had to call them "impressive" on X, the social media platform he owns.

Meanwhile, Shenzhen has also set a world record for flying the largest number of drones under the control of a single computer.

Would it have also been tremendous encouragement for Hong Kong if Musk had remarked similarly about its shows had the drones been able to take off in Hong Kong too?

Perhaps it would be imprudent to blame Hong Kong officials for acting cautiously. Nobody in the administration would allow any mistake to happen, especially during an important event like the National Day anniversary.

Lessons are being learned from the incident. What matters is that, after the lesson is learned, officials are better equipped to fly the drones the next time National Day is celebrated to win Musk's praise.