Many of the arguments are equally valid if a drone ban is the goal. Since the aircraft and operator cannot be identified one should not expect compliance with rules by many parties. Arguing that corporations should have priority over “hobbyist” will certainly reduce the number of users and supporters of drones.
Objection, Your Honor! This proposal hands drones a free pass while grounding legacy aircraft with extra red tape. It clears the skies for drones and dumps the compliance load squarely on the shoulders of manned aircraft operators, especially the legacy crowd.
Quite a few things going on here…
Regs are for safety of flight, not commercial expediency. Implied in that safety of flight is a human onboard, if no onboard human life at risk then priority is not there. An exception would be if a TFR is established for a specific mission/time where a UAS has a lifesaving mission.
“Nobody is in charge” is not an excuse or confidence building statement. Some living breathing PIC must be accountable and responsive…regardless of command/control logistics or corporate liability shielding.
Winning the trust war vs battle…right or wrong, things like trolling social security number indexed databases and using ADS-B out to charge for services are individual battles won, but remain as factors in how much trust is left to draw upon.
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Where/how is this emerging industry paying user fees if not thru fuel taxes?
…and if you throw AI into the C2 mix, do you want to establish a precedent where unmanned has priority?
“The part needed to fix a CL-415 water bomber damaged in a drone strike in Los Angeles on Thursday was on its way to L.A. on Friday.” from AV Web today says it all. If you want unpiloted commercial operations in the National Airspace, be prepared to pay for the safety of others. Factor it into your business plan. The only regulation I need to see is one that requires an inaccessible/non-removeable kill switch on all drones that activates automatically if within a quarter mile of any aircraft with humans onboard.
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There are several valid and perfectly legal reasons for operating “hobbyist” and commercial aircraft off-airport below 500ft including seaplane ops, sightseeing off an island or volcano, dirt of grass strips, gravel bars in the case of back-country ops, snow and ice ski plane ops. And there are perfectly valid reasons for “fear of being tracked” including history of using ADSB for revenue generation and enforcement of questionable “power-grabs” such as this one. To the contrary, you are proposing that faceless, nameless non-operators have ROW to operate these “commercial” drones anywhere with complete immunity. Why not restrict BLOS drone operations to certain “drone airways” and let them do their thing in the middle of the night so they dont encroach on our freedom to fly without fear of being whacked by a drone. Another thing it may not be possible for a manned aircraft to see and avoid a drone as the drones are usually smaller and more maneuverable.
Part 107 drones must always give way to manned aircraft because they are so difficult to see. Manned aircraft that are more maneuverable already have to give way to less maneuverable aircraft, and drones are always going to be more maneuverable than any manned aircraft (that’s just physics due to their lower mass), so they should follow the same precedent.
I could not possibly be more opposed to this for several reasons.
Slightly tongue-in-cheek: One could be cynical, but not necessarily incorrect, and state that Part 103 and all the other flavors of GA are a giant, money-sucking PITA to politicians, authorities, and air-gods with a lot of liquidity and a lot of friends. The promise of smaller-government in the future brings with it the potential for simplified, easy-to-enforce rules. Simplified and enforceable rules are often heavy-handed and arbitrary, and favor those wealthy enough to write them. Good luck to anyone selfish enough to aviate soley for self-actualization, and not for the benefit of corporations and billionaires.
Speaking as a helicopter owner/pilot, this could be a very complex issue. But it really all boils down to accountability, which is quite simple: the Right to Life. Unless and until all drone operations in the NAS are conducted by a human with some “skin in the game”, they should be severely illegal, as in Class A felony.
Any aerial vehicle carrying “ugly bags of mostly saltwater” has a fundamental right-of-life (and thus -way) over all other aerial devices. Otherwise how, exactly, does a drone differ from a very large remote-controlled bullet?
I’d be willing to accept exceptions as long as every drone controller could detect that it had lost contact with its drone, and would instantly trigger a bolus of C4 in the controller.
In the case of autonomous drone swarms, some human must be designated to wear a vest containing a bolus for each drone aloft.
It’s all about having “skin in the game”. Until drone operators ante-up, they should be banned above 100’ agl.
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The rapid growth of drone delivery services, like Wing and Walmart assumed to be serving 60,000 households in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, is adding more pressure to an already overloaded air traffic control (ATC) system. Walmart’s drone program isn’t going so well right now, and ATC is still struggling with outdated equipment and too few staff, making it hard to handle the current air traffic. Adding more drones to the mix will only make things worse, increasing the risks of mid-air collisions, disrupting flights for manned aircraft, and delaying emergency services due to crowded airspace.
The FAA and NASA are working on Unmanned Aircraft System Traffic Management (UTM) solutions, but there’s no clear date for when these will be ready nationwide.
Pro-drone groups pushing to quickly integrate drones into shared airspace without fixing these issues could end with reckless, irresponsible, costly, and dangerous programs. A better plan would be to require drones to have advanced anticollision systems and tracking technology, making them pay their share and reducing the burden on ATC. Without these precautions, rushing drone integration while encroaching airspace could lead to serious safety risks and hurt the long-term development of drone technology.
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A quick preview of the future will be provided by the Presidential Inauguration TFR for the DC SFRA/FRZ in a week. The number and type of flight ops will be severely restricted, as is appropriate, and to which we have become accustomed.
Buried at the bottom of the NOTAM is the following laundry list:
Prohibited Operations ANYWHERE within the SFRA/FRZ:
Model Aircraft, Unmanned Aircraft (UAS), Aerobatic Maneuvers, Glider Operations, Parachute Operations, Ultralights, Lighter than Air/Balloon/Moored Balloon, Agricultural/Crop Dusting/Spraying, Animal Population Control, Banner Towing, Utility/Pipeline Patrols, Aircraft/Helicopters operating from a ship or private/corporate yacht, Model Rockets, or Maintenance Flights. Flight Training/Practice Approaches are prohibited."
Now, with the unlikely exception of “Flight Training/Practice Approaches” what type of operation do you suppose is the most frequent inside the SFAR?
Follow up question: What percentage of UAS operators get and read, much less abide by, NOTAMs?
Last question: How long will it take for drone footage of the Inauguration to show up on the net?
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Good point. The reliance on blanket restrictions during events like the Presidential Inauguration is a clear sign that current ATC safeguards are not adequate to address the growing complexity of modern airspace. This highlights the urgency of modernizing ATC systems, developing robust UTM frameworks, and addressing staffing shortages to ensure safe and efficient airspace management in the future.
Populating the airspace with drones at this time, without addressing these fundamental shortcomings, is like putting the cart before the horse. Drones must be required to have effective—not superficial or inadequate—ID and anti-collision systems. Anything less compromises safety, increases the risk of airspace conflicts, and undermines public trust in both drone technology and aviation as a whole.
Dayum.
I flew radio controlled aircraft in the 80’s, dabbled in electric RC in the early 2000’s. A felon? Worthy of life in prison or the death penalty?
That sounds reasonable.
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Ah, one more thing. The proposal broadly paints GA operators below 500 feet AGL as largely noncompliant, using this as a rationale to prioritize compliant drones. By emphasizing noncompliance, particularly among “hobbyists,” it undermines the significant and legitimate use cases for low-altitude GA operations, such as training flights, sightseeing, crop-dusters, and humanitarian missions.
It boils down to effecting “action at a distance”, RO. There is a reason that shooting a guy with a gun is punished more severely than punching him in the head. Both could result in death or serious injury, but only one of them is the result of an “action at a distance”, severely tilting the balance of power and thus the onus.
If you, even unintentionally, flew your RC aircraft into a crowd causing a fatal injury, you should be held liable. Worse case, it’s negligent homicide, but you are responsible. If that is the case at 5’ agl, why should it be less so if it happens at 500 feet?
If your RC aircraft (which is invisible to me when closing at 50kts) hits me aloft, it is entirely possible that my helicopter will be uncontrollable, and my widow will be suing you big time. We both have the “see and avoid” onus, except that you are invisible and operating at a distance. You have absolutely no skin in the game. So yes, that does sound pretty reasonable to me.
And surely you know that the penalty for a felony has a wide range of punishments, from Life to a slap on the wrist. I know of a guy who was convicted of 34 of them, and it won’t affect him at all …
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No. The difference is in the level of violence. A fist fight is much different than a gun fight.
Responsibility is not what is being argued. But I would argue, that we all to often attempt to replace personal responsibility with law.
If I am operating at a distance, you wouldn’t run in to me and I wouldn’t run in to you.
Do you even know what a Class A felony is? You’re attempting to compare flying a drone to murder, rape and kidnapping.
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While I don’t agree with aviatrexx’s overall premise, I read that to mean that the operator of the drone is operating at a distance. The drone may get hit by a human-occupied aircraft and both may receive “fatal” damage, but only the humans in the aircraft will suffer the consequences.
I do agree that drone operators who cause damage to “persons or property” should be held liable for their actions or inactions in the same way that the pilot of a manned aircraft would.
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As a matter of fact, I do. I am asserting that flying a drone in human-carrying-airspace is at the very least “attempted murder”, and if you kill someone while doing so it demonstrates mens rea, which makes it “premeditated murder”, which is a Class A felony in most states.
Check with your attorney and see what he says about your liability in such a circumstance. For all I know you may live in Wyoming, and it’s perfectly fine to shoot at aircraft overhead.
To address the similar problem in Europe, EASA asked the industry to develop ADS-L, the “light” version of ADS-B.
Talos Avionics ADS-L is fully compliant to the EASA ADS-L 4 SRD 860, short and medium range.
We also have an FTS (flight termination system) over ADS-L available as required by EASA Means of Compliance (MoC) document Light-UAS.2511-01
Our equipment can be adapted to the US market.
Please visit www.talosavionics.com
Just as any person should be held liable for damage or worse. No more. No less.
As to the rest of his post, I don’t think any reasonable discussion could be had. Most of the time such diatribes don’t worry me. However, many times I am taken aback and think, “behold a jury of your peers”.
Let’s call this what it is, an attempt to grab airspace for their money-making business under the justification of their business has more value than the non business pilot flying in the same airspace, therefor they should have priority over the airspace. The author is correct in one aspect, he’s alienated everyone else whom uses the same airspace they want priority over. It’s his apparent opinion that those without ads-b should be forced to get it. His negative tone of calling everyone else non-compliants whom by law don’t have to have ads-b puts his opponents in a negative context. It’s obvious he appears to be an everyone under total control via ads-b so they can all be watched. I wonder what drone manufacturer he’s being paid by… That or an FAA positive control of GA fan whom thinks such control is safer.
Just because the drone special interest group wants priority over airspace doesn’t make it either right nor safe. Their value doesn’t dictate priority, safety does. The rules as said earlier are for safety reasons, not profit vs non profit reasons.
THose using the 0-500’ airspace need to oppose this seriously or they will get their way and another freedom will be lost.
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Sounds like you are describing business jet operations.
Realistically, achieving meaningful controls for drones, ensuring safety, protecting privacy, and reducing noise pollution, is possible, but it’s an uphill battle. The technology and regulations needed to address these issues are complex, costly, and far too slow to match the rapid expansion of the drone industry. Without decisive action, communities may find themselves with little more than complaints as drones buzz overhead.
The pro-drone movement, backed by deep pockets and political influence, has momentum on its side, making it difficult for local opposition to gain traction. Yet, communities are not powerless. By organizing, enforcing existing laws, and demanding accountability from drone operators and regulators alike, they can push back. Local and state governments have a crucial role to play in slowing the drone invasion, using tools like zoning restrictions, privacy laws, and noise ordinances to mitigate the impact.
The real question is whether communities and their leaders are willing to take a stand or if they’ll resign themselves to a world that’s noisier, less private, and increasingly dominated by unchecked drone operations. The swarm is turning, and without action, the consequences will be irreversible.
You guys are forgetting one minor issue when discussing the current dilemma. Public acceptance and perception. Drone operators are not largely perceived as rich snobs with noisy luxury toys. The average citizen without any affinity to general and business aviation (largely incapable to differentiate between B748 and Cessna “Sportplane”) appears to be indifferent to topics such as:
• Invasion of privacy
• Operation in restricted/ prohibited airspace
• Risk analysis (Midairs, Terrorism, Espionage)
• Did Drone hit Plane or vice versa?
The integration of drones into the NAS is a matter of convenience for most. People DO like the idea of having a fully autonomous apparatus deliver their pizza, geoceries or latest buy now purchase - whereas rich people with expensive noisy toys are perceived as a nuisance and environmental disaster.
Best of all: Drones are Battery Powered! Another E-Everything that is healthy for the environment!!
Example: Where I live, its prohibited by law to operate a drone close to (e.g.) a police station or public building, close to energy infrastructure and so on. Yet, Joe Schmuck operated his DJI BVLOS above maximim permitted altitude and lost control of his “toy”. Instead of returning to base, the little bugger crashed someplace.
Joe Schmuck now posted on a local group on Facebook, asking fellow trolls to help him locate his drone. And guess what they did?! They went and found it for him!
We’ve had these topics for more than a decade.
I am afraid, we are beyond the suggestion phase.
Common Sense has left the chat.
The drones will win the fight.
—@Jethro442: “If a kill switch is activated then you have the problem of a drone falling on someone. Or several.”
Vs. Hundreds in a 777 on final. Or a firefighting tanker. Or me.
Didn’t say it had to fall on persons. Kill switch could be just that - Drone is in a bazillion, non-harmful pieces. Or autoeject parachute. Or programmed to drop a hundred feet. The point is, if operators want to play in the airspace, they have obligations to those who are already there, and the same level of responsibility. I think the thought of losing a strong monetary outlay would tend to be self enforcing for them, and result in a higher standard of care. As Aviatrx said, albeit more forcefully.
Well, as a manned aircraft pilot, I’ve had my doubts about drones, especially when it comes to how they can encroach on airspace. It’s a real concern, bad actors or careless operators can cause serious safety issues. The idea of an untrained person flying a drone near an airport or a busy flight path makes my stomach turn.
But I’ve also come to respect the technology. These little machines are packed with wonders, stabilization, cameras, even autonomous flight capabilities. It’s incredible what they can do for their size and price. They’ve opened up aviation to people who might never have thought about flying otherwise, and that’s a good thing.
The trick is balancing the marvel of drones with the need for safety and accountability. When used responsibly, they’re amazing tools and a lot of fun. But we can’t ignore the risks of misuse, whether it’s accidental or intentional. They’ve earned my respect, but they’ll always need to be kept in check. Too old for this kind of fun.
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Well stated, Raf. There must be a balance point somewhere. We have local RC pilots who have their own field and are well away from our traffic pattern and practice areas. Yes, there are mavericks and there are risks with RC aircraft, but it tends to be very localized. There are responsible drone operators who follow the rules and have a modicum of common sense. Unfortunately, those responsible UAS pilots seem to be in the minority, at least in my neck of the woods. We have had several incidents in our area with drones at pattern altitude and in or near the traffic pattern. That is unacceptable at any level and should be punishable/actionable by the FAA and the law.
I’m still OK with a ban on drones, with the exception of first responders. I might be talked into allowing certain commercial ops as long as they were strictly regulated and with stiff penalties for non-compliance. I don’t trust the media drones and don’t need to have a close-up of the latest disaster.
At some point a drone is going to take down an aircraft resulting in a loss of life, perhaps many lives. Unacceptable.