FAA Drone Regulations Guarantee Showdown

Press

By Robert Goyer
You have to hand it to the FAA as it attempts in heroic fashion to work drones into the National Airspace System (NAS). It’s not really a fool’s errand, because unlike the silly fool, the FAA hasn’t chosen this task; it’s got no choice but to try to accomplish the impossible and hope to upset as few people as possible. Integration is not what’s actually happening here, no more than a hive of angry bees are integrated into a Sunday picnic.

The FAA’s latest salvo, in the form of an NPRM on the operation of small drones (less than 55 pounds), is a dramatic rewrite of the agency’s previous working guidance on such craft. There are so many drastic changes in philosophy — no pilot’s license required, line-of-sight operations only, new simplified weight, speed and altitude standards and relaxed airspace restrictions — that one wonders how profoundly the reaction to this proposal will affect its eventual form.

The problem is there’s no way to solve every issue and make every stakeholder happy.

Pilots (and their member organizations) want our aircraft to be safe from drones — even a 50-pound drone could crack a small airplane’s flight controls like an egg. We need protection as tens or hundreds of thousands of these mechanized Jurassic bugs make their way into our low-lying airspace.

Big companies, who have far more clout on the drone-free Hill of Washington, D.C., want unclipped access to the skyways and buy-ways of this great land. They want it all, and who can blame them. Whether it’s taking real estate shots for a mansion on the hill, delivering that new iPad to the consumer’s doorstop via next-day quadcopter express, or flying pipeline patrols hundreds of miles away from the nearest company employee, the commercial opportunities of UAS are blue skies all the way up.

Those concerned with privacy rights, and that’s almost all of us, are asking how we protect ourselves from the snooping of remotely operated flying cams. Not surprisingly, the concerns of the average Joes and Janets of this world were not addressed by the FAA in its latest proposal.

There are answers to almost all of these concerns, but just as answers are supplied in every other segment of aviation, they all cost money, regulatory burden or weight. Unfortunately, one stakeholder’s breath of fresh airspace is the next stakeholder’s regulatory yoke. In the end, there will be plenty of unhappy townsfolk.

My guess is the first season of drone wars will be a flashback to the wild west, where the lawmen, whom everybody had gone west to escape, are called in to save the town from the outlaws. Only difference is the outlaws these days have way better legal teams than the law.

I advise holding onto your Stetson hats. Crosswinds are coming in.