After Republicans gave up on a plan to privatize air traffic control yesterday, the House of Representatives approved a five-year Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reauthorization bill featuring among other things, support from both parties to expand commercial drone operations in the US.
Today, the Commercial Drone Alliance asked Congress to revoke Section 336 of the FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012, the special rule for model aircraft, that allows drone hobbyists or recreational drone flyers to fly their unmanned vehicles without a license if they adhere to certain safety standards.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) just approved first responders at the fourth busiest airport in the world, Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport to fly their drones directly over the airfield. DFW Airport will be the first airport in the US that is allowed to do so.
Amazon Prime Air and other companies may begin delivering packages by drone as soon as this summer, according to federal regulators and industry officials. Since late last year, the White House has started to put more pressure on the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to work with companies to make delivering packages by drone and other drone applications a reality.
At the FAA UAS Symposium last week, it became clear that drone deliveries may be here sooner than we think as federal officials promised drone proponents: “We’ll help you get there.”
One of the best examples of drone deliveries must be Zipline’s blood and medical supply delivery system in Rwanda. The San Francisco-based company has successfully used drones to fly “more than 187,500 miles, delivering 7,000 units of blood over 7,500 flights” since they launched their service in Africa. Could medical cargo benefitting from using a drone to deliver supplies open up the skies for more routine drone deliveries?
During last week’s FAA Symposium in Baltimore, Amazon, Boeing, GE, and Google announced that they are ready to start working on the development of a private Unmanned Traffic Management (UTM) system for drones. Testing in conjunction with NASA is supposed to start in the next three months. The system will enable swarms of drones to fly a couple of hundred feet above the ground using cellular and web applications to avoid collisions and allow for remote tracking.
According to a Federal Aviation Administration official at the FAA Symposium, there are 10 times more drones registered in the US than manned aircraft. And, as we know, so many unmanned aerial vehicles in the hands of consumers has led to many drone incidents as well. Federal officials are urgently looking to mitigate the risk of drones in the hands of “the clueless, the careless, and the criminals” by introducing drone identification and new powers for the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security to track, disrupt and bring down unmanned aerial vehicles that pose a threat to security.
The FAA’s Acting Administrator, Dan Elwell, announced during the FAA Symposium last week that the tests of the automated Low Altitude Authorization and Notification Capability (LAANC) system will be expanded. This is an important step towards an Unmanned Aircraft Systems Traffic Management System (UTM).
Next week will be the 3rd Annual FAA Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Symposium at the Baltimore Convention Center in Baltimore, MD. The event will run from March 6 to 8 and is organized by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI). If you ever wanted to have some face time with people from the FAA this is your chance. You can register here.
A drone may have been involved in a helicopter’s crash landing in South Carolina earlier this week. This would make it the first drone-related aircraft crash in the United States. The incident happened on Wednesday around 2 pm as a student pilot was practicing low-altitude hovering in a remote area, according to Charleston Police Department report. Luckily both the student and the helicopter instructor were uninjured.
During the Singapore Airshow last week, a top official of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) stated that the regulator is planning to craft rules by this year to make it easier to identify drones and their pilots. The rapid growth of the drone market and the rising number of incidents involving these unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV’s) are the main drivers behind the need for increased drone regulation.
To draft the new rules, the FAA is working closely together with other agencies and industry partners, said Carl Burleson, acting deputy administrator of the regulator, during a panel discussion. Adam Welsh, DJI’s head of public policy for Asia-Pacific was on the same panel and also weighed in, pleading for a global set of rules that would save time and could be implemented faster.
One million drones have been registered with the FAA as of this week, announced Elaine Chao, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Transportation at CES 2018. This figure includes 878,000 hobbyists. Hobbyist drone pilots receive one registration number for all the drones that they own. Then there are also 122,000 commercial, public, and other drones that are individually registered.
The deadline for the Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) Integration Pilot Program is approaching fast. Lead Applicants have until 2pm EST today to complete their Volumes III, IV, V and VI.
The FAA warns in a tweet that: “You will not be able to continue with the program if you do not meet the deadline.”
Commercial drone operators represent the majority of the interested parties that have submitted their applications to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s UAS Integration Pilot Program.
Millions of people around the world have received drones for Christmas this Holiday Season. In the UK alone the number of drone users is expected to have doubled after this year’s shopping season. So, can you now charge the batteries and go fly right away or are there some things you should learn before you try out your new toy? Hint: for U.S. drone pilots register your drone.
According to the latest PEW Research Center survey, 8% of Americans say they own a drone and 59% have seen a drone in operation. Just like in the UK, drones are catching on as consumer goods in the US. However, regardless of the unmanned aerial vehicles’ increasing popularity, many Americans have reservations about where and under what circumstances drone operations should be allowed.
In a news release, the FAA announced that at the request of U.S. national security and law enforcement agencies, new locations have been added to the list of locations where you can no longer fly your drone.
In one of his most recent videos, Casey Neistat reviews the 4K Snap drone. This is the same drone that the FAA allows CNN to fly over crowds with. Neistat had pre-ordered the drone two years ago when he was still flying a DJI Phantom 3 drone. The new Snap drone seemed much smaller and lighter at the time. Now, two years later, drone technology has moved on and we have drones like the DJI Spark, a drone that is much, much smaller than a Phantom and even smaller than a Snap drone.
Drone registration has been reinstated after President Trump signed the $700 billion National Defense Authorization Act, which includes the requirement for drones weighing between 0.55 and 55 pounds to be registered with the FAA in order to be flown legally in the U.S. With the number of drone incidents steadily increasing the registration requirement does not come as a surprise.
Drinking and drone flying at the same time could become illegal in the Garden State as lawmakers are moving ahead with legislation. The new law cleared an Assembly committee on Monday and is now up to a vote in the Senate tomorrow.
Two days ago we wrote about an FAA-commissioned study that had been released by a team from the Alliance for System Safety of UAS through Research Excellence (ASSURE), that concluded that drones colliding with large manned aircraft will likely cause more structural damage than birds with the same weight for a given impact speed.
Chinese drone manufacturer, DJI responded to the ASSURE report, in which a DJI Phantom 3 was used, with a public statement to address some of the concerns.
This week a new research report has been released by a team from the Alliance for System Safety of UAS through Research Excellence (ASSURE) that concludes that drones colliding with large manned aircraft will likely cause more structural damage than birds with the same weight for a given impact speed.
Whereas birds have a soft mass and tissue, drones are made of harder materials and contain more compact mass, such as batteries and motors, which are likely to cause more damage during a collision with a manned airplane.
The Federal Aviation Administration has issued the first waiver to an Albuquerque, N.M. cinema drone company. The film company will be allowed to fly over the crew and cast on film locations.
The US Department of Transportation and the Federal Aviation Administration released an “Information for Operators” memo today in which they recommend the use of reflective vests by small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS) remote pilots. These orange vests should have text on them such as “Drone Pilot Please Do Not Disturb”, “Drone Pilot Stand Clear”, “Drone Pilot” or similar warnings against distracting the person wearing it.
On November 14th, 2017, the Federal Aviation Administration publicly released a database with non-identifiable information of every drone registration up to October 31, 2017. Dan Gettinger and Arthur Holland Michel at the Center for the Study of the Drone at Bard College have published a preliminary but detailed analysis of the FAA registration information. They confirm some things that we already knew, such as DJI being the undisputed leader in the drone market as well as some surprising insights. The information released by the FAA shows registrations geographically for both hobbyist and non-hobbyist segments of the drone market.
