FAA Pressures Coldwell, Other Realtors To Stop Using Drone Footage

mpicpp (3454017) writes For months, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has been investigating realtors who use drones to film their properties. Now, Forbes has learned that the FAA's investigations have succeeded in intimidating NRT —the nation's largest residential real estate brokerage company — into advising their members to not only cease flying drones as part of their work, but to also cease using drone footage. This is a troubling development in an ongoing saga over the FAA's rules which punish the safe commercial use of drones. Currently, the FAA does not prohibit the use of drones for a hobby — flying over your home and taking pictures of it for fun is allowed, but because real estate drones take pictures for a commercial purpose, the FAA prohibits their use.

Comments

Re:Perfectly appropriate action for the FAA to tak

[DarkOx]

I am usually a pretty big skeptic when it comes to regulation but I gotta agree with you here.

This seems like a federal agency operating well withing the boundaries of what it was established to do. I also think we do need some management of [commercial] drones, do to the sheer numbers and the fact that most operators are flying over other peoples properties, where crashes could cause damage or injury.

People doing purely as a hobby problem I would be more skeptical of the need to regulate them. There numbers are few enough and lets be honest most of the air craft they would be operating will remain small and light; we can probably expect incidents form their use to be infrequent enough and small enough in severity to sort out in our local small claims courts at least until that proves not to be the case.

The real-estate folks though are using the drones commercial and if we let every real-estate agent, grounds keep, delivery boy, paper boy, etc; fly a drone with no management whatsoever that is hell of lot of drones in air! Some of those crafts might start getting bigger and heavier pretty quickly as well.

Re:Perfectly appropriate action for the FAA to tak

[PPH]

Nope. It's a completely appropriate action according to the FAA's mandate and charter. It's their exact *job*.

Maybe. But then perhaps its time for Congress to rewrite the mandate and take the commercial/hobby distinction out.

Leave them with the safety and certification roles. But the operation of drones needs to be consistent across all uses. Something isn't more or less safe if money changes hands. We (the USA) are going to be left behind as other jurisdictions allow commercial drone use, subject to rules compliance. Commercial use brings money into the industry, which pays for R&D and the refinement of safety rules. US manufacturers don't have the ability to participate in this, leaving the business to foreign concerns. That is definitely NOT the FAA's charter.

Re:Perfectly appropriate action for the FAA to tak

[PPH]

Commercial exceptions are well-established in U.S. law.

But this isn't a case of a commercial exception. Commercial aircraft operators are subject to far more stringent regulations than private/recreational*. And that's fine, particularly for passenger carriers. For the public on the ground, I want the regulations to treat commercial and private safety equally. I'm not going to be happier if some billionaire drops his personal 737 on my house than if it was Southwest Airlines. On the other hand, once a drone operator 'goes comercial', I would expect them to carry liability insurance and have deep pockets to protect. As a result, I'd be more comfortable with a business operated drone than a hobby flyer over my house.

This is just like Uber and Lyft vs New York City. The entrenched cab interests have one way of doing things and they are using their regulatory agency to block new technology. The same appears to be happening for flight serice companies. Piloted aircraft for hire are having the FAA protect their turf.

*The general aviation manufacturing business almost went under in this country until legislation was passed to limit their liability. That runs counter to the idea that there is an atmosphere of business exception in this country.