DRONES FLY ONTO REGULATORS’ RADAR

In 2015 the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) formally decreed that drone pilots—even hobbyists—are aviators and must accept all of the rights and responsibilities that come with that designation. In other words, if a person buys a drone weighing between 250 grams and 25 kilograms (including camera or other payload), he or she needs to register that mini-aircraft with the government.
The new FAA rules seek to balance the popularity and promise of drones with concerns about national security, radio-spectrum ranges, privacy and safety and were hardly a surprise. The guidelines came at the tail end of a year in which unlicensed drone interference with passenger aircraft nearly tripled in the U.S. And that doesn’t include a number of high-profile mishaps closer to the ground, including White House lawn landings and collisions with people the drones were set up to photograph.
The new guidelines require registration but not licensing and were announced in advance of holiday gift-giving that’s expected to add hundreds of thousands of drones to the skies. Additional unmanned air traffic will come from businesses and researchers. Already, online retailer Amazon this year further outlined its plans for using drones as delivery vehicles and is working with NASA and others on an air traffic management system. And scientists made good use of the technology to help them better understand Earth’s changing climate and wildlife ecology.
Commercial drones presently can only fly within U.S. airspace with special permission. In fact, the agency has already doled out thousands of these exemptions to farms, railroads, security services, medical facilities and others. Everyone else can expect formal commercial drone regulations by the end of next year or early 2017.—Larry Greenemeier