FAA Stops Free Life-Saving Rescue Missions, Group Fights Back

The Texas EquuSearch Mounted
Search and Recovery Team (TXEQ) saves lives. These volunteers
conduct free search-and-rescue missions with remote-controlled
airplanes. They’ve used these drones to find more than 300 missing
people across the U.S. and seven other countries. Too bad, says
the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA): The organization is
violating federal drone policy.

In February the FAA sent TXEQ an email warning the group that
its operations were illegal and should “stop
immediately.” According
to The Wall Street Journal, the organization
obeyed the order but isn’t going down without a fight. In March
TXEQ’s lawyer, Brendan Schulman (who recently won an unrelated

high-profile case that may loosen the FAA’s grip on
drones), responded
to the government, saying its “order is groundless.” He went
on:

The civilian use of a model aircraft for purposes of a volunteer
search-and-rescue effort is lawful and violates no existing
aviation regulations. The FAA announced a purported ban on
“business” use of model aircraft…in 2007, but that ban is not
binding on the public because it is only a policy, not a
regulation. Moreover, the use of model aircraft by Texas EquuSearch
for volunteer humanitarian purposes falls outside of that ban.

He also noted that the FAA has verbally harassed TXEQ on at
least six occasions over a span of seven years while its volunteers
were working on missions. Schulman requested that the FAA reverse
its decision within 30 days or face legal action. He told the
Journal that the group may sue in federal court. With one
week remaining, the FAA has yet to make a move.

The agency, which is under pressure from Congress to establish a
coherent body of regulations for drones by the end of 2015, did
initially recommend that TXEQ get emergency certificates of
authority. In his reply, Schulman noted that such certificates are
irrelevent, because the administration only grants them to other
government bodies or their contractors.