1,407 FAA exemptions for UAS

Quadrocopter drone

In May 2014, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) began accepting petitions for exemptions to operate unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) commercially in civilian airspace. As of 1 September 2015, 1,407 of 2,650 petitions have been approved.

Congress mandated an August 2014 deadline for the integration of small UAS into the National Airspace System, and a September 2015 deadline for the integration of all UAS — timeframes the FAA will miss with no clear indication as to when they will meet those obligations.

The flood of commercial exemption requests shows that a mature UAS commercial market is waiting to be unleashed; 84% of the approved companies are small businesses and California, Florida and Texas  (in that order) had the most approvals, indicating that most of the big companies are waiting for the FAA.

An analysis of the stated purpose of all the petitions showed them grouped as follows with the top item having the most approvals:

• Real estate
• General aerial surveying
• Agriculture
• Construction
• Film and TV
• Utility inspection
• Environmental uses
• Search and rescue
• Emergency management
• Insurance

The data shown above, and analyzed in detail in the AUVSI report from which it came, indicates that these initial waivers favor simple, low-risk operations that pose no real threat to the National Airspace. The data also shows, by omission, that beyond line-of-sight and night-time operations, such as those proposed by Amazon, DHL and others, are critical to achieving the full economic benefit of UAS use, but must await more collision-avoidance technology and a technological regulation framework from the FAA.

Frank Tobe is the owner and publisher of The Robot Report, and is also a panel member for Robohub's Robotics by Invitation series.

Frank Tobe is the owner and publisher of The Robot Report, and is also a panel member for Robohub's Robotics by Invitation series.