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FAA Bans Delivering Packages With Drones
An anonymous reader sends this report from Ars Technica:
The Federal Aviation Administration has said that online shopping powerhouse Amazon may not employ drones to deliver packages, at least not anytime soon. The revelation was buried in an FAA document (PDF) unveiled Monday seeking public comment on its policy on drones, or what the agency calls "model aircraft." The FAA has maintained since at least 2007 that the commercial operation of drones is illegal. ... In Monday's announcement, published in the Federal Register, the FAA named Amazon's December proposal as an example of what is barred under regulations that allow the use of drones for hobby and recreational purposes. The agency did not mention Amazon Prime Air by name, but it didn't have to. Under a graphic that says what is barred, the FAA mentioned the "Delivering of packages to people for a fee." A footnote added, "If an individual offers free shipping in association with a purchase or other offer, FAA would construe the shipping to be in furtherance of a business purpose, and thus, the operation would not fall within the statutory requirement of recreation or hobby purpose."
Free as in Free Drone Beer
quick... fire all those new "drone engineers".
Back to the catapult idea.
RTFS
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Drones are for delivering missiles.
Suborbital [spaceflight] is the special olympics of spaceflight. - Rei
Yet another example of an overbearing bureaucracy killing innovation.
According to TFS,
That would be "in furtherance of a business purpose, and thus, the operation would not fall within the statutory requirement of recreation or hobby purpose."
In other words NO,
No, in order for a drone to operate it must be for "recreation or hobby purpose." So they're explicitly calling out "even if you say it's free shipping, it's still for business, i.e. not recreational purposes, so is definitely still banned." They're trying to make sure no one tries the "free shipping" loophole.
I guess my drone hunting license is useless....
Low-level flight should be regulated on a municipal level, not through national airspace policies. Such type of drones doesn't need (despite having the ability) to fly higher than you average apartment block. As such, commercial, recreational or even military use of such gear should have never fallen under the FAA's jurisdiction, as the FAA never really had control over what's on a shallow level of the ground (excluding airports or helipads, but even there it's the facility that molds to the FAA regulation and not FAA regulation restricting it to total impossibility).
It's much like saying the FAA should regulate paper-plane throwing or bungee-jumping: "Hey, you can't jump from that bridge wearing an Amazon t-shirt silly. You're going to jail"
... I loaded the entire post. Sorry 'bout that.
"If an individual offers free shipping in association with a purchase or other offer, FAA would construe the shipping to be in furtherance of a business purpose, and thus, the operation would not fall within the statutory requirement of recreation or hobby purpose."
Apparently. Sounds like as long as the shipping costs are not linked to the purchase, dronelivery is fair game.
If challenged, Amazon might win by proving that Prime is a subscription for better service options in general, and that the free shipping aspect is a courtesy to the loyal customers as opposed to Prime being only a shipping cost rescheduling program.
In related news FAA administrators ban all technological progress. In a hearing scheduled for some time where anyone who might pay attention will be at work they will be discussing the potential banning of airplanes altogether in favor of long distance trebuchet.
Trebuchet's: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
You'd have to argue that since corporations are people too, the corporation can make deliveries as a hobby. Somehow, I don't think that will fly.
Whence cometh the idea it's "only for recreational purposes"?
FAA, we The People, hereby instruct you to quit dragging ass and come up with commercial service. Yours is to obey us, not the other way around.
Also, Congress should get off its ass and mandate this too.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
better then killing the hobbyist seen by over doing the safety reg and other stuff.
But for commercial use they better be safety and drone operator training so they can't just hire anyone and that if some thing goes wrong that some will be there to pay up and make so that they can't hide under layers and layers of contractors and subcontractors
These rules are tentative, and Amazon is a long way off. By the time Amazon is ready, I think these rules will be modified.
Lease the drone to the end user with stipulations not to tamper with the hard/software for the duration of the flight?
The FAA puts the kibosh on something that wasn't practical to begin with.
Its very cheap. Also Thai post is very cheap.
Karel Kulhavy Twibright Labs
So much for me getting my pizza delivered by drone!
I didn't check the actual article but, from the summary, this sounds like same old same old.
Drone use has been limited to non-commercial recreational use. This is not new, this has been the state of things for a while, we have seen several articles on it. I don't see how this adds anything new except to point out that Amazon's plan, wouldn't be legal under current regulations.
This seems kind of navel gazing as it was a) obvious and b) everybody has been expecting those regulations to change in the near future.
Was there really anyone who expected amazon would start such deliveries before the obvious and well known regulations that forbid it changed? I certainly expected all their plans were aimed at being ready for the opening of the floodgates and not an attempt to jump ahead of them.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
...this just means it's time for Amazon to laywer-up. Or lobbiest-up. Or both.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Let them put together a way to spy on all drone package delivery data, and boom, the FAA will suddenly approve Drone Package Delivery.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
This has been debated before but here's the recap.
An administrative judge ruled in 2013 that the FAA does not have the authority (in other words it has not been given this authority by Congress) to regulate model aircraft including balsa-wood planes, paper-airplanes, radio-controlled (r/c) planes, helicopters, quadcopters, hexacopters, etc. This is established fact. The FAA elected NOT to appeal this.
The FAA has attempted to levy _one_ fine against someone flying a 'drone' (see above for disambiguation with quadcopters, hexacopters, etc. and realize it's the same thing) and THAT was the time the administrative law judge shot them down and hard.
The FAA can write whatever they like in the Federal Register.
Step 1: Get Congress to give them the authority. Until then the FAA lacks jurisdiction*.
Step 2: Get Congress to fund enforcement actions under this authority. Until then the FAA won't [be allowed to] enforce anything.
Step 3: Profit.
Ehud
commercial helicopter pilot
Tucson AZ US
* A previous poster said that "if you can put a piece of paper between it and the ground the FAA has jurisdiction." This is not true. The FAA's jurisdiction comes not from simplistic experiments with tree bark pulp and thin slots, but from the Code of Federal Regulations. It's all in there. Too boring to quote tho.
So, this is a win for Amazon. They get free publicity for the holiday season from the announcement to use drones, and they don't have to deliver (pun not intentional) because of the mean old geezers of the FAA.
I have to wonder: was that their plan all along?
Corporations are not people. This is seriously over told statement based on misreporting by a US Supreme court reporter who coined the phrase.
All cities and towns file articles of incorporation within their respective states.
This means that all cities and towns are corporate entities designed to make a profit by conducting business transactions.
Laws and ordinances are created within these cities and towns to further the corporate business of making a profit.
When municipal law enforcement arrests you or gives you a citation, such that it requires you to pay remuneration to the corporation, they are acting in the business interests of their employer, the municipal corporation.
Ergo, municipal corporate law enforcement operation of a drone "in the furtherance of a business purpose", to wit, the assessment of fines to be remunerated to said corporation, "does not fall within the statutory requirement of recreation or hobby purposes" and is, therefore, illegal.
Thank you, FAA, for spelling out the illegality of all municipal corporate law enforcement operation of any drone for the purposes of revenue generation for that corporation.
No parking-enforcement drones.
No traffic-law-enforcement drones.
No building-code-enforcement drones.
No water-usage-enforcement drones.
No horticulture-enforcement drones.
No drones allowed for any ordinance which has the sole purpose of revenue generation for the municipal corporation.
Gee, about the only category left for the municipal corporation to claim for legal use is...
HUNTER-KILLER DRONES.
Thank you very much, FAA, for all your hard work.
-Corporal Clegg
If the aircraft operator requires physical visible sight of aircraft to maintain aerial function, or does not have a video or operational data streamed back to their position to maintain flight, they are operating a model aircraft. If it is anything other than this, it is a drone.
Why does the media have a hard on for calling anything that flies via remote control, a drone?
...ban an entire industry...
That industry better make with the campaign contributions, then.
How inappropriate to call this planet Earth, when clearly it is Ocean.
What if, instead of delivering a package, it just delivered a pizza? That would be good. There wouldn't have to be any package involved.
I'd eat a pizza that wasn't in a package.
Governments squash innovation. News at 11.
This was actually a very smart regulation. The fact is, the newspapers likely would have ended up filled with stories of people who had gotten a buzz cut or even seriously injured after being hit by a drone. The idea of sending a drone into neighbourhoods and relying on a computer algorithm and finicky electronics, hoping that nothing goes wrong and that it can avoid hitting something, perhaps even killing someone, is bonkers. There are too many things that can go wrong. A bug in code, a bad sensor reading, or simply something not being where it is expected to be, could send the thing headfirst into some kid riding his bicycle.
Seriously... who the frack thought this would EVER be practical? It's like that nonsense "beer delivery" drone - except there was no way that drone could deliver a 6-pack, let alone a case of bottled beer to anybody. Range, payload, maintenance, control, and fuel all mean a big "NO" to delivering packages by "drone" for at least the next few decades.
It's a JOKE. Apparently, a brilliant one, because slashdotters still believe that something useful could be delivered in a practical manner this way.
Air travel is a terrible idea in general. There is too much stuff living in the air that needs to be there, especially bugs, for lots of automated air traffic to make sense.
Man, even cars should be traveling in high speed underground tubes, not making life a living hell on the surface. So, more noise and fuss above ground? No thank you.
Just a couple of months ago, in March, a Federal National Transportation Safety Board Administrative Judge ruled that the FAA does not have legal authority to regulate small low-altitude commercial drones.
FAA seems to be trying to act like Obama, going ahead with policy it already knows to be illegal.
and have worked extensively on safety studies. No commercially available UAV (including the military ones) are anywhere close to safe enough to fly over populated areas. The experimental ones, generally, are not adequately designed to be able to characterize their safety. None of them meet the extant rules for aircraft design, nor can be flown in compliance with FAA operational rules outside of the (congress prohibited creating any) hobby RC aircraft rules.
Drones are inherently digital fly by wire aircraft. Standards exist for designing fly by wire aircraft, and have been learned the hard way ... people dying. None of the drones are anywhere close to meeting those design rules, and generally fail to comply with most other design rules except the structures ones. And, there is no ruleset yet for the datalinks to control the drones.
"but, but, but ... small drones" ... How many people are seriously injured every year by a flying object we call a "baseball". There's a reason that almost every baseball league requires batting helmets. And that's a very small flying object. Drones need a mature ruleset, and should not be allowed to fly anywhere near people until there's some ruleset, so we can start developing some maturity to that ruleset.
While drone delivery is a stupid idea for the city and suburbs, I think it has some real possibilities for rural areas.
Being able to fly long distances over largely unpopulated regions, line of site and not affected by road conditions and with no on-board pilot/driver, seems potentially efficient.
Of course these are also the areas with toothless yokels with shotguns, so that may pose some problems.
A terrible blow for Tacocopter, and taco-lovers everywhere.
Presumeably the FAA doesn't think that hobbyists are much more responsible flyers than corporations doing business, so there must be another reason for this ban, yes? What could it be?
a) Corporate business use would amount to greatly increased drone flights, and the FAA just doesn't think its regulatory ability, or the safety aspects of the technology, is ready for prime time wide scale use yet? For example, the interaction of drones and conventional aviation would have to be worked out in great detail for safety, and more technology and rules would be needed.
b) Nuisance aspect of the technology? Noise? If widely deployed?
c) The FAA just likes banning stuff in general, and new stuff in particular?
d) Some vested competing interests (say, trucking industry? teamsters?,...?) are lobbying / bribing FAA senior administrators and/or politicians who have a say?
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
This intrepretation seems like it came from a lawyer, not a pilot.
The congress said rulemaking on safety is ok, but for non-safety things no rules for light hobby models from the FAA.
The FAA says, we are not going to make any special model safety rules but any new rules that don't exclude models will apply to them.
Seems a great opportunity to stall the rulemaking some more in court.
Great deal if you a lawyer.
Not so great if you want to be safe while flying in the air.
What we need is a clear set of boundaries and responsibilities to keep these models and other aircraft separate.
GIven a set of guidelines, the AMA can figure out how best to make them happen.
But they need a set of guidelines that need to happen.
Suggested set.
1) Below 400 feet and away from airports, existing AMA rules work.
2) Above 400 feet, models are responsible for coordinating with, and maintaining clear sky separation from other aircraft.
3) A modification to 91.1c to include rule 91 applicability for UAV operators and owners not covered by the model exemption.
4) Perhaps a 91.1c applying to modelers for safety affecting manned aircraft, but again, I think this is counterproductive because of the quantity of rules a modeler would have to be aware of. Maybe a short list of a subset of rules in part 91 (especially 91.13) would be useful.
In short, the congress asked for a light touch with rules for the hobby folks. The FAA should at least try that first.
We saw this coming, and have been using autonomous land vehicles since 2010. The oldest stuff has been open sourced, so let me know if you need it.
www.robots-everywhere.com
Liberty - Security - Laziness - Pick any two.
Amazon could pay people to receive shipping. That clause isn't covered.
The first 30 or so meters or so from the ground should be for buildings and power lines. Airports are off limits. This leaves an area for law enforcement (boo), pizza delivery drones (yay), package delivery drones. Divide it up 30-40 for this, 40-50 for that, etc... Make sure the drones can evade each other (which should be easy). Then boom - our future will be one with drones zipping over our heads 24-7 (boo).
Truth schmuth, I like idea of "corporate hobby."
> The revelation was buried in an FAA document (PDF) unveiled Monday seeking public comment on its policy on drones, or what the agency calls "model aircraft."
"Model aircraft" is a generic term covering all types of radio controlled fixed and rotary-wing models, the vast majority of which require active inputs from a human operator. Hobbyists have been flying them for decades and they are lightly regulated by the FAA.
"Drone" is an over-hyped and frequently mis-applied term implying autonomy from human input, complete loss of privacy and fiery death by Hellfire missiles.
AAANNNDD, time for underground electro-mole delivery.
The people need to wake-up and start reeling-in the federal government. Nearly everything it has its fingers in is justified as "regulation of interstate commerce" as a way to get around the very explicit limits of federal government power in the Constitution. The founders, however, wrote that "escape clause" when the word "regulation" meant "to make regular" NOT "to write lots of arbitrary rules and hire lots of bureaucrats to control the behavior of individuals and communities".
By what "right" (other than the abuse of the "commerce clause") does the FAA even EXIST? Surely the founders would NEVER have allowed the agency to in any way regulate an aircraft that did not cross state lines (and YES, they WERE aware of aviation; Ben Franklin saw a Montgolfier balloon flight and wrote about possible uses for ariel troop transport, etc). Some will scream about the need for FAA rules to make airliners "safe" but I have 2 responses to that: First, this can be donse with SIMPLE rules that do not impact private pilots or hobbyists; just let the FAA handle air traffic above 15K feet or within a fixed lateral distance of any airport that handles airliners. Second, the NTSB is actually the body that analyzes crashes and provides the feedback into the industry that leads to increased safety. There's simply no reason why the FAA should have ANYTHING to do with ANYTHING below 15K feet, not crossing state lines and not interfering with an airport's approach and departure paths.
When aviation began, there was no FAA, and if there HAD been then aviation could not have begun except perhaps as an Apollo-style government-run effort to make 2 or three men fly, perhaps 5 or six times at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars using 300K support personnel on the ground. The FAA has not even existed for all of the history of commercial aviation... it was preceeded by the smaller, less-intrusive CAA - but that proved to be too ineffective for the politicians who wanted to use the power of the government to interfere in the airline industry in order to "pick winners and losers" and collect "campaign contributions" from the would-be politically-favored "winners". These levers of government were fully-engaged in the era when Pan Am (and their politicians) was trying to keep Howard Hughes and his TWA from competing to haul passengers across the Atlantic.
Any time an activity is "fine" with government regulators when done as a hobby, but MUST be regulated, licensed, approved etc if done "for profit" then you KNOW the rules have NOTHING to do with safety etc. Such rules are about NOTHING but power, control and money. Why is it "OK" for me to co-pilot a cessna (piloted by a friend) and take photos as I travel, but illegal if the exact same two people in the same two seats of the same plane fly the same path and I take the same photos... BUT then I sell the photos for profit (thereby making it a "commecial endeavour" requiring additional permissions (and fees)) ???
Any claim that this has ANYTHING to do with safety is a blatant lie; it's about paying more fees, submitting to more regulation, and acknowledging that the government has more authority; government ALWAYS demands that you say that they have authority (probably because they are, at some level, insecure in the knowledge that they do not in fact have that authority with any degree of legitimacy).
The FAA could solve ALL the air safety problems by simply banning unlicensed drones from high altitudes where pressurized airliners fly and banning them from proximity of airfileds where airliners operate. The rest could be left to the state and local authorities to decide how to ban "peeping-tom" drone activity, or punish people who crash drones into people or property (exactly as these same authorities deal with car and motorcycle and skateboard crashes and liabilities). Nobody thinks we need federal motorcycle licenses and operating rules even though you are FAR more likely to kill-or-maim with a motorcycle than with a hex-copter. Nobody thinks we need federal licenses and traffic control to drive an SUV from LA to Sacramanto, even though you can do just as much damage as you could do in a lighter, less-massive and not much faster Cessna 150.
We have too few drones and too many people. The loss of a person here or there shouldn't be taken so seriously. Obviously we let people freeze in their own homes and perish in our shrubs and sidewalks so why the heck does a drone whacking off the odd head now and then worry us much at all?
They cannot ban birds from flying, right? So just build stronger and dumber birds by GM. Besides people love birds.
This is just like the ban slapped on amateur rocketry after 9/11. Knee-jerk reactions to non-existent problems. Amazon would never fly any drones without some massive insurance policy; they aren't even being given ANY chance to present a properly risk-assessed and due diligence plan forward - just a big NO from the FAA. This also reminds me of the recent cock-up over Russian rocket engines where SpaceX warned us the Russians would do just what they did a week later.
Henry Ford must be spinning in his grave seeing how much we clamp down on real innovation now. If he had to deal with this Brazil-style bureaucracy in his day his car wouldn't have ever seen the light of day; the Wright Brothers would have been issued a cease-and-desist and then raided by some fed SWAT team at Kitty Hawke. Just ridiculous and sad.
Ok but sine corporations are peole couldn't amazon as a person develop a hobby of flying drones with packages attached to them... As part of the hobby they then challenge them self to get better by saftley placing said packages in specific predefined targeted areas of other peoples homes or businesses?
See now it's simply a "hobby" done by an individual and not for business. Lol
"Dear Amazon. The airlines don't like it that you're using autonomous aircraft to avoid paying air transport fees. Now stop what you're doing before we send the black vans."
Am I the only one who noticed the timing of this announcement by Amazon coincided with the christmas shopping season; this was nothing more than a quite successful bid for free publicity.
Not only are "drone" package deliveries technically unfeasable, they are not financially viable by any stretch of the imagination. Maybe...maybe in several decades.
1) All delivery drones have parachutes
2) All delivery drones have GPS
3) Non-commercial people earn 'credits' for end delivery.
4) So Amazon polls reliable rated gogets, send a drone+package to them - not the ultimate delivery address
5) 3rd party gets it there by whatever means
6) Amazon sells or hires delivery drones.
So from fullfilment centre to someones work building - balcony, roofspace etc, and on the drive home they drop it off.
It makes a lot of sense for kids to get paid for droning stuff in clear visual line of flight mode and have fun at the same time.
Like Uber, the delivery men wont like this model.
A dog may think a drone is a large frisbee.
One thing that bothers me and other model aircraft hobbyists and enthusiasts is the insistence on calling model aircraft "drones". ..... .. To inflate fear, that's why.
This post at one point says, "..... policy on drones, or what the agency calls "model aircraft." "
You know what? They've been model aircraft for over 50 years now. Why have we started calling them "drones"?
So call them what they are. Model aircraft. They are NOT drones. Knock it off. Seriously.
As a compromise, the regulators should approve routes that avoid populated areas. This would minimize risks in the event of a crash. Also they may need some sort of traffic monitoring and control infrastructure to handle multiple companies performing deliveries.
So it's alright as long as I am ordering missiles from Amazon?
Could force Amazon to develop teleportation technology for delivering packages instead...
what should be illegal is passing laws without the consent of any legislature !!
the faa can make all the rules they want... amazon just has to fly their drones below the faa airspace
You've misinterpreted the ruling in the case you mentioned. This was an NTSB Administrative Judge saying that the FAA specifically allows Recreational and Hobby aircraft, but makes no mention of commercial restrictions. The new memo released by the FAA fills the gap by explicitly banning commercial drones.
The FAA regulates all airspace in the US. It is within its rights to specify what can and cannot be done.
I don't think the drug smugglers will have a problem with not having FAA permission.
I'm sure Scott Adams will have a strip next week on it.