Washington, DC—The FAA was very
tight lipped about the drone regulations they are drafting for public comment
later this month.
An FAA official claims they
are releasing a Risk Based Proposed Regulatory Program that will integrate
commercial drones into the airspace.
Judging from today’s
Congressional hearing they are attempting concentrate on educating the
operators of small consumer drones and more serious regulation of anything
else.
Oddly enough they never once
mentioned using drones for news video news gathering and only touched lightly
on filmmakers.
Once they release their draft
drone rule package it must be published and then there is a routine schedule
for inviting public comment. Once that
period passes the FAA will then set their rule in concrete. That of course can be challenged later both
by Congressional action and litigation.
The FAA seems to be coming to
grips that the small camera drone operator will be nearly impossible to
regulate. They are currently haggling
with the manufactures about geo-fencing software manufacturing requirements and
packaging FAA rules and guidelines with the drones at the point of sale.
The larger drones that will
be traveling greater distances and have by nature a higher risk have cumbersome
licensing, vehicle air worthiness inspection and registration in their
future.
The rules are going to cover
all types of drones fixed wing or multi-rotor and the FAA seems to understand
that one size does not fit all.
We will have to see what they
do in the coming weeks. The Obama
Administration’s FAA has already put us well behind Canada, Europe and Australia. Billions of dollars are at stake and the USA is now weaker as a result.
I wish the hearing today
could have disclosed real direction but there were lots of questions with very few
concrete answers.
Of course the pilots fables
of near misses were no small subject of conversation. They all failed to mention that no deaths or
serious injuries have been reported.
Chicken Little is alive and sending out his alarms about falling skies.
If you’ve got a couple of
hours to watch bureaucrats and politicians reading prepared statements and
tossing a few questions around you can see this below:
