Rules in commercial drone industry

After years of deliberating, creating multiple committees, and imposing stopgap measures, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has finally come up with clear regulations for commercial drones.

The FAA said in a release that this change “could generate more than $82 billion for the U.S. economy and create more than 100,000 new jobs over the next 10 years,” as businesses will no longer have to wait for the government to approve exemptions, and those waiting for clear legal requirements before entering the commercial drone operating industry now have an answer.

But not everyone is happy with the new rules, including those hoping to run drone delivery services, such as Alphabet and Amazon.

The FAA’s rules say that drones can’t be flown at night, and they still must always remain within eyeshot of the pilot — which means it’s not very likely that any of the autonomous drone delivery systems companies are working on will be flying in US airspace anytime soon. This means that companies like Amazon, Walmart and Alphabet won’t be able to have their delivery drones fly themselves unless they plan to only deliver goods during the daytime and only as far as their pilots can see their drones.

It’s entirely possible that the FAA will redress the rules for the sorts of delivery flights that Amazon and others want to carry out in the future. “With this new rule, we are taking a careful and deliberate approach that balances the need to deploy this new technology with the FAA’s mission to protect public safety,” FAA administrator Michael Huerta said in a release. “But this is just our first step. We’re already working on additional rules that will expand the range of operations.”

The FAA has produced a three-page summary of its hundreds-of-pages-long new regulations. But here’s a few of the key points:

Source: matadornetwork.com