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FAA Proposes $1.9 Million Fine For Unauthorized Drone Use
An anonymous reader writes: The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration has been under pressure to regulate the nascent drone industry. It's obvious they lack a clear idea of how to proceed — but they're trying. Today they announced a proposal to fine SkyPan International a whopping $1.9 million for allegedly conducting 65 unauthorized commercial drone flights over Chicago and New York City. The flights occurred over a period of almost three years, for the purpose of aerial photography. 43 of the flights impinged upon highly restricted airspace, and the FAA says none of them were "without risk." They bluntly allege that SkyPan "operated the aircraft in a careless or reckless manner so as to endanger lives or property." SkyPan now has 30 days to respond.
The problem is a result of the situation in which drones exist but no airspace exists for drones to fly in. If there were a clear and viable way for drone operators to legally share the airspace with other aircraft, then they'd probably do it, especially the commercial ones.
It's ridiculous. You even hear of people getting lengthy prison sentences just for driving a car! Do we need these kind of government regulations??
True, they happened to be driving their car at great speed through a crowd of pedestrians on the side walk, but still. As long as we can phrase criminally reckless behaviour as innocent sounding activities, the government should keep their nose out of it!
It did not matter the Air Traffic Control violated 1 km horizontal separation and 1000 feet vertical separation without a mid air collision. If the rule was violated the incident report must be filed. All rule violations must be filed. Accidents are too infrequent to infer statistically significant conclusions.
Among the federal agencies FAA has a very good track record of amending the rules and regulations to help improve safety. It does not simply issue fines for incident violations. When some rule violation becomes too frequent it analyses the situation and comes up with a solution too.
For example, when the pilots go through the check lists, if it gets interrupted, the rule is to start from the top all over again. Pilots should NOT try to remember what was done and continue from the middle. But this rule was getting violated too often. They analyzed and found that the check lists were getting too long and it was quite tedious to start from the top. They broke the check list into sections, and amended the rule "Start from the top of section. Each section should start in its own page. No section should have more than so many checks". This is how we achieved the safety in air travel. It might hurt the free market fanatics to accept it, but FAA is one federal agency that is doing its job right.
May be a little too slow to respond, and may be it has some conflict of goals in its charter, "to promote safety" as well as "to promote air travel". It is high time we remove the requirement for it to promote air travel and make safety its single goal.
In fact its procedures draw universal acclaim and some medical researchers are arguing for check lists for surgeons for their procedures.
If FAA says this drone operator flew their machines with reckless disregard for safety, they did. They should pay the fine.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Here's the problem: If you allow the FAA to get away with this crap, then you have lost the war and have given up power to yet another byzantine bureaucracy. This five-mile rule is ridiculous for several reasons: 1) Airports generally don't have 360-degree approach patterns (heliports notwithstanding and even they have approach and departure rules), 2) No airport pattern is lower than 800 feet except on final and departure legs which are clearly defined and those don't need 5 miles, 3) Where did they come up with that figure for the fine and who gets the money?
The City also owns the strip of land between the sidewalk and the street, but the property resident is required to keep it mowed or raked, as required. And everybody has legal access to it. Very little regarding these types of issues breaks down into the arguments that chest-thumping my-king-is-my-castle advocates use. When they try to understand the mowing requirement, they invariably get bent out of shape; they're compelled to feel under attack, because their misguided stand-in for property rights would leave the requirement on the adjacent owner, not the resident.
I just get upset I can't legally engage in sword duels on "private property." So much for the castle theory. I'm only allowed if I catch them crawling through the window, not if they consent.
In the story though, the morons aren't accused of violating private property, but rather restricted airspace. The funny thing about the private property angle; protecting uniquely valuable property is one of the reasons for restricted air spaces in cities. And people with rooftop helipads have a right to make use of the airspace, which is negatively impacted by unlicensed pilots flying shit through air traffic lanes.
As with everything else, just regulation will assist in managing legitimate access, and unjust regulation will block access. No regulation, combined with locally scarce airspace, would just leave it unsafe for manned flights.
The fine isn't just for unauthorized drone use; it is for unauthorized drone use in restricted airspace, dozens of times. That alone makes it reckless, because the restricted areas are for real public safety reasons. Doing it repeatedly shows a recklessly casual disregard for safety regulations, while violating them, and in the physical presence of people, property, and aircraft that are supposed to be protected by the flight rules.
And not only is there is an air traffic easement, there is also a variable building height limit. You can certainly still stand on the roof and enjoy your 500' though.
Another thing that slipped through the cracks:
From the Cornell link:
You own the bottom 500' or so, but that is because it is not navigable airspace. In the same way that a river with obstructions is not "navigable" but might still have small watercraft tootling about. In my State the State owns all navigable waterways, and there is a law allowing 10' of bank access. So most waterfront property has a public easement and can't legally molest bank fisherman who would otherwise be trespassing. If things are officially classified as navigable is a major thing in understanding these regulations. If it is navigable, I can also get a permit to dredge for gold. Of course regarding air space there is still an easement, because access below the navigable level is permitted for takeoff and landing, and some other uses.
And the Godwin-equivalent for these discussions: Property tax! That's my 500', but I lease it from the State indefinitely.