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FAA Clears Movie and TV Drones For Takeoff
alphadogg (971356) writes "The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration is taking its first major step toward opening up the skies for commercial drone use, allowing six TV and movie production companies to use drones to shoot video. Commercial flight of drones has been effectively banned by the FAA as it grapples with how to integrate drone traffic into controlled airspace while not compromising the safety of existing air traffic. But as the months have passed, it has come under increasing pressure from U.S. companies to make a ruling."
Actually, that's the arguably the biggest problem here. The FAA was directed to develop a policy for commercial drones, and it's initial reaction was to determine, without any sort of rule making process, that drones that followed the model rules were not in fact models, and attempt to prohibit any sort of autonomous flight whatsoever. A couple months back they were even saying that first person view direct remote control under model rules was unacceptable, and still claiming that no rule making was required.