The FAA's rules on the commercial use of drones are just guidelines, it turns out, which could mean the small craft soon will be buzzing around our heads like flies. There already have been several incidents of close calls between drones and humans, however, so it's likely the government will find some way of clamping down on their widespread commercial use.
The use of commercial drones in U.S. airspace is essentially legal, at least for the time being.National Transportation Safety Board Judge Patrick Geraghty this week nixed the Federal Aviation Administration's attempt to levy a US$10,000 against Raphael Pirker for using a remote-controlled glider to capture video footage for an ad.
Since Pirker had used the drone for commercial purposes, he violated regulations that required such commercial use of unmanned air systems to first receive approval from the agency, the FAA argued.
However, Geraghty ruled that there was no binding FAA rule that banned flights such as Pirker's for commercial purposes, and that the FAA overreached by using aircraft regulations to mandate model aircraft usage.
No Legal Basis
The FAA has never regulated model aircraft, and its legal basis for governing commercial drones -- a 2007 policy notice -- was not binding, claimed Pirker's lawyer, Brendan Schulman.
Geraghty agreed, ruling that the policy notice the FAA used to ban commercial drones was not enforceable because it had not been drafted as part of a formal rulemaking process.
"The FAA wants to regulate commercial drones as they have the ability to infringe in airspace that may already be occupied or in use," Steve Abdu, executive vice president of technology and training at Expert Aviation Consulting, told the E-Commerce Times.
"Some of these drones are big enough to take down a commercial airliner. Besides airspace infringement, there are many other considerations -- such as privacy, civil rights, who owns the airspace over a given property, etc," he noted. "On the flip side, there are many pluses
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