senseFly commercial FAA exemptions reach 100 and counting
From the not quite as it seems dept (ed)
Over 100 organisations in the U.S. have now been granted Section 333 commercial exemptions by the FAA to fly senseFly drones, confirming the eBee as the country’s most exempted fixed-wing UAS and senseFly as the second most exempted UAS brand overall.
As of December 8th, 110 American companies have been granted Section 333 exemptions that relate to the use of senseFly products. Such exemptions permit these companies to use senseFly drones for paid work, providing they also hold the requisite Certificate of Waiver or Authorization (COA). Nine of these 110 organisations hold exemptions that apply to multiple models of senseFly drone.
“We are delighted to see professional senseFly drones being so well accepted, both by the FAA and the market in general,” said senseFly CEO Jean-Christophe Zufferey. “This exemption achievement really comes down to the inherent safety of our lightweight, intelligent systems. We now look forward to more operators being able to benefit from these products as longer term UAS regulations are put in place.”
The majority of senseFly-related exemptions to date (approximately 80%) apply to the use of the company’s popular fixed-wing eBee mapping drone—confirming this platform as the most exempted fixed-wing drone (according to publicly available FAA exemption data). The eBee is typically employed in applications such as land surveying, GIS, mining and environmental research.
The remaining senseFly-related exemptions apply to the company’s new eXom drone for inspection and close mapping, the eBee Ag drone for precision farming and the survey-grade eBee RTK.
The overall number of commercial organisations holding Section 333 exemptions passed 2,000 in September 2015—according to The Exemptions Database*—the largest proportion of which apply to the use of multirotor UAS for applications such as photography and videography.
Sensefly gear is great but they only have 66 N registered airframes flying in the USA as of today. There might be plenty of people adding the craft to their initial 333’s but it does not mean they own them.
Just look at Measure who I think still don’t operate any systems and according CEO Brandon Declet their Section 333 exemption covers more than 400 types of RPA.
Registrations are the only fair way of measuring success as they are platforms actually bought to be used.
