The FAA’s Drone Rules Are Too Narrow, But They’re Better Than Nothing

SkySpecs

If you’re a drone pilot—or one of many drone entrepreneurs—the good news is that it may soon be legal to fly unmanned aerial vehicles for commercial purposes. The bad news is that the FAA rules may be much more strict than most drone aficionados hoped, according to the Wall Street Journal.

But for Ryan Morton, the CTO of SkySpecs, a company that makes anti-collision software for aerial drones, the good news outweighs the bad. Overly restrictive rules, he says, are better than no rules at all. “It’s better,” he says, “than the way it is now.”

Today, pilots must receives a special exemption from the Federal Aviation Administration to legally fly drones for commercial purposes in the U.S. Many drone operators flaunted this rule, arguing that the FAA didn’t have authority over unmanned craft. But last week, the National Transportation Safety Board ruled that the agency does indeed have the authority to regulate unmmanned aircraft the same way it regulates manned aircraft. That means everyone who wants to use drones commercially will have to be approved by the FAA, whether they’re construction surveying company SkyCatch or retailers like Amazon who want to use drones for deliveries.

According to the Journal, the new rules will apply to all drones under 55 pounds, including the smallest and lightest of aircrafts, and flights will be limited to daytime hours only. But perhaps the biggest issue is that all drone operators would be required to acquire a pilot’s license from the FAA. That could be a major hurdle for self-taught drone operators with no experience in the cockpit—and an added hassle for drone startups.

The rules may not take effect for years, the paper reports, and will likely undergo many modifications. But even if the most restrictive version of the rules ends up being passed, Morton thinks it will be an improvement over the status quo, which has made it hard for his company—and many others—to enter U.S. markets. “I’d rather they say you have a pilot’s license than the current lack of regulation,” he says. That said, he does have some misgivings.

A pilot’s license, he says, doesn’t necessarily cover the same skills needed to pilot a drone. There are many things a traditional pilot needs to know that aren’t necessarily relevant to a drone pilot, such as how to control a Cessna or emergency land on a short runway, and in similar fashion, there are skills that are unique to drones.

Commercial manned aircraft may fly far above heavily populated areas, but the pilots never need to learn how to hover around buildings and other structures, let alone humans. Meanwhile, a drone pilot tasked with surveying a construction site may need to land close to a lightly populated area, or hover close enough large equipment to take photos for inspection. Drone pilots also need to know how to safely handle lithium batteries, which can catch fire explode if handled incorrectly. A traditional pilot training program won’t cover these sorts of thing.

Ideally, Morton says, the regulations will be more nuanced, with different certification requirements for different types of drones. “A 50 pound drone that can’t fly more than 200 meters is probably less dangerous than a two pound drone that can fly five miles,” he says. But that type of regulation, he admits, will be particularly tricky to write and enforce. Law enforcement can readily verify the size and weight of a machine. But it’s much harder to determine things such as maximum speed and range.

That’s part of why Morton is so forgiving of regulators at this point in the process. “The FAA does have a daunting task on their hands,” Morton says. “They’re being pulled in a lot of directions. They’re getting a bad name in the process. In my view is that they’re doing it the way they should.”

What’s important now, he says, is that we get some rules in place so that drone companies can finally bring the businesses to the U.S.—and so that we can find out what works and what doesn’t. “We’re not going to get it right the first time,” he says. “We need to keep iterating.”