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."

Comments

I get it

[slashmydots]

Oh, I get it. They finally made a centralized policy for drone use.
Individual - OH HELL NO!
Commercial - How much lobbying money do you have?

Re:I get it

[bobbied]

Keep it under about 200', and away from airports and you are free to move about the country. RC models have been operating under these conditions for a long time. So individuals CAN operate drones NOW as a hobby. What is being limited in COMMERCIAL use of drones, and drones that impact existing air traffic.

Re:I get it

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:I get it

[bobbied]

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.

For Commercial operations yes, the FAA has totally banned drones for commercial use (until now)... Hobby use, not so much. Where the FAA technically governs anything from the ground up outside a building, they've never really handed out regulations for individual private hobby flying toys and I doubt they care about them as long as they don't interfere with manned flight operations.

It's the same sort of thing they do for ultralights. Keep the aircraft under a specified weight and out of controlled airspace and you don't need to register the craft, have a pilot's license to fly it or have a license to maintain it. Just stay out of controlled space and they don't say anything. Try to sell rides in your ultralight and voila a whole host of regulations hit you because it's now a commercial operation. Same with Drones. Keep it small, low and for personal use, they won't bat an eye, but start doing commercial things with it and they are going to inspect you every which way and twice on Sunday.

You see, the FAA really only cares about the commercial use of the airspace, which is really their mandate. Yea they govern private aviation too, but only because they use the same facilities as commercial and unless everybody follows the same rules when mixed up, bad things will happen. But you get a private plane outside of controlled airspace and they won't care much about you anymore. Just don't endanger the commercial operations..

Brilliant. Got to prioritize...

[mellon]

After all, TV shows are way more important than structural evaluations, aerial photography for site planning, roof inspections, and the myriad other commercial applications that are actually useful and safer than the way we currently do it. Sigh.

#Bias

[Libertarian_Geek]

So, the left leaning (Hollywood production) companies get a benefit from the executive branch that other companies do not.

Re:#Bias

[MondoGordo]

no ... the money gets the honey, bunny! It has nothing to do with political ideology and everything to do with what politicians you own.

Major unanswered questions

[LordFolken]

Disclaimer: I'm a Glider Pilot in Europe. I haven't yet seen a drone that actually operates autnonmously. What I mean by that, is active collision avoidance according to sensory input. Judging by the amount of noise complaints we get at every airfield in europe.. i doubt people will be very happy to have 100s of drones flying over their heads in the cities. Certification will not make halt in front of these drones. All equipment in aircraft must be certified. This requirement will still be there if you want to fly the drone in the vicinity of people. There is the question of miniaturization? How will they fit GPS/Transponder/anti icing technology and the additional power onto such a small platform?

Re:Major unanswered questions

[ArcadeMan]

Anti-icing technology? I don't know what you guys are doing with your drones in Europe, but over here we don't put frosting on ours.

Re:Major unanswered questions

[bobbied]

thought i made a spelling mistake, but at least Wikipedia agrees with me. Winter does bad things to aircraft. ;-) ice accumulates at the leading edge of wings and props, until the profile is no longer generating lift. That is why most aircraft have heating in the wings leading edge and mechanical deformation to break of the ice.

Actually, usually only larger aircraft have deicing capacity. Most private airplanes have none beyond heat for the airspeed probe.

Commercial aircraft carry it only for convenience because the flying rules state that you cannot fly into known icing conditions without it. They take it along so they can more easily make their schedule and not have to fly around stuff.

Finally, I'd like to point out that there are multiple kinds of deicing setups and what you describe is pretty much how the low end stuff works. Most commercial jets just heat the leading edges using high temperature bleed air from the turbines. The rubber boot thing doesn't work so well at high mach numbers...

Democrat priority: Hollywood First

[SuperKendall]

Forget you amateur scum that are not with movie studios, how many votes can you bring? How many weeping melodramas showing how evil "The Others" are can you produce?

Re:Brilliant. Got to prioritize...

[Nyder]

After all, TV shows are way more important than structural evaluations, aerial photography for site planning, roof inspections, and the myriad other commercial applications that are actually useful and safer than the way we currently do it. Sigh.

Not to mention they grounded search & rescue drones. http://arstechnica.com/tech-po...

It's obvious it's all about the money, not about anything else.

Re:compromising the safety of existing air traffic

[bobbied]

So drones are flying at 38,000 feet or circling over international airports now?

Not by individuals or companies. I'm guessing we have government doing this already, if for no other reason than to allow testing.

Surely there is a minimum allowable altitude for any manned aircraft so simply mandate all drone stay below that. There you go FAA, i just saved you millions in lost man hours and other random crap associated with this kind of nonsense. I'll be expecting my cheque any day now.

There are *recommended* limits, how high you should fly over obstructions, how far away you should stay from people etc, but if you are flying VFR over farmland it's pretty much pilot discretion outside of controlled airspace. You will get blamed if you ball it up by hitting a tree and you might even get cited for being reckless, but if you are PIC and you think it's safe, knock yourself out all the way down to the ground.

I suppose you could just declare that Drones under 500' AGL (maybe 200'?) outside of controlled airspace that maintains minimum distances from humans and property are allowed for any reason that's not commercial. Just issue a NOTAM and tell pilots that they are only protected above 500' AGL, problem solved. I think I'd put size and weight limits on these unlicensed drones, but apart from the size and weight limits and commercial operation that's what we have/had until now.

Re:Brilliant. Got to prioritize...

[dbc]

Indeed. Crop inspection drones are my favorite poster child for this. If a corn farmer in Iowa wants to fly a drone at 50 feet above his own farm consisting of 1200 contiguous acres of crops, I don't see how that in any way could be dangerous to anyone or anything. But the movie companies have lots of money to spend on lobbying and political donations.

Re:iT'S FINE UNTIL....

[ScentCone]

All this drone stuff will be fine until one manages to crash into an airliner, bringing it down. Then the FAA will be swamped with people demanding to know why the drones were allowed in the first place.

Which is also true of traditional RC aircraft, which have been flown for decades - with plenty of opportunities to get up into the path of full-scale aircraft. The carnage has been incredible, one plane after the next falling out of the sky.

The problem isn't going to be people shooting crop health, checking their gutters, doing an aerial during a TV shoot, or getting real estate photos. The problem is going to be malicious users. Just like wrong-headed people who choose to be malicious with lead pipes, shotguns, or kitchen knives.

A bunch of laws telling law abiding people not to fly their camera robot over 400' will mean exactly nothing to someone who doesn't care about laws.