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.
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.