FAA: Drone Regulations Are Vital to Protecting Safety, and You’ll Get Them in a Decade or So

Don’t go holding your breath
waiting for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to determine
a comprehensible, graspable policy on commercial drone use. Despite
wading into the previously unregulated unmanned aircraft industry
in 2007 and forbidding commercial drone use until federal rules
could be put into place, it’s just about to start making those
rules (seven years later) and is not expecting to finish the job
until well after 2020.

From
Forbes contributor, John Goglia:

Although small unmanned aircraft rulemaking—applicable
to those under 55 pounds—is expected to begin by the end of
this year, the entire rulemaking process for significant rules,
according to [Jim] Williams [head of FAA’s unmanned aircraft
office], takes 7 to 10 years.  And, he stated, that this
rulemaking would certainly be considered significant.  So it
seems that no rules are likely to be finalized until the end of
2021 at the earliest and possibly not until 2024.  This is
much later than many in the commercial UAV community that I have
spoken with expected and hoped for.

Until there are final rules, Mr. Williams stated that approval
of commercial drone operations would only be done on a case-by-case
basis.  As of now, only commercial operations in the Arctic
have been approved. But Mr. Williams was hopeful that a
process authorized in accordance with Section 333 of the FAA
Modernization and Reform Act of 2012 would allow a faster
introduction of commercial operations, at least in some specific
categories, such as precision agriculture (fertilizer and pesticide
application), closed-set filming, refinery, pipeline
and power line inspection. 

In April, Steve Chapman highlighted the
terrible way the FAA has been throwing its weight around to
block private use of drones, even for surveillance assistance in
rescue missions. Why would anybody trust the FAA to use reasonable
discretion given the authority to approve drone applications on a
case-by-case basis?

Williams also claimed that there’s been one
near-miss of US Airways flight nearly colliding with a drone
over Florida. The CNN report, though, fails to explain whether the
drone was actually a private commercial drone in the first place.
And it’s particularly telling that he throws out such scares at the
same time as telling people it will be maybe another 10 years
before these rules exist. The FAA has little claim to power over
drones anyway. A federal court has already ruled the FAA
overreached by fining a businessman for using a drone to take video
for a commercial. The FAA is appealing the decision and is, of
course, continuing to act as though it has this authority in the
meantime.

(Hat tip to Mark Sletten)