9 ms·

FAA records detail hundreds of close calls between airplanes and drones

38 points by shahryc 11y ago

tswartz 11y ago
I think it's good that the FAA is documenting close calls with drones, however the press is a little overblown. This long time pilot views drones less of threat then geese or other large birds. That may change if drones get bigger and heavier, but all things point to drones getting smaller. A pilot's view on drones: https://jethead.wordpress.com/2015/08/08/airliners-vs-drones-calm-down/ https://jethead.wordpress.com/2015/08/08/airliners-vs-drones...
- tromobne8vb 11y ago
  My biggest question is what is a 'close call'? Is it something that a layperson would also agree is a close call? Some of the examples in the article don't sound too scary. "Whizzed underneath aircraft as it approached a runway" leaves a lot of room for interpretation. Other examples in the article do sound more scary, but is that just cherry picking or typical?
  - acveilleux 11y ago
    Technically, the FAA defines a "near mid air collision" as an incident where there was a possibility of collisions with a proximity of less then 500 feet. Keep in mind that's an airbus A380 is approx. 240 ft. long, 260 ft. wide and 80 ft. tall. In that context, 500 ft. is actually quite close.
    - Dylan16807 11y ago
      Though in the context of drones being limited to 400 feet of altitude, the whole flight could be considered a near miss with the ground...
      - mannykannot 11y ago
        The way some people fly, it is.
- mast 11y ago
  I don't see signs of drones getting smaller. It seems to me they will only get bigger and heavier especially if companies like Amazon are going to be using them to deliver products.
  - Mindstormy 11y ago
    In reality they will most likely go down both paths. Amazon and others looking to ship goods via drones will want something bigger, while sports enthusiasts will wants something smaller.
  - bigiain 11y ago
    I'm an anecdata point for the "my drones are getting smaller" side here: My first couple of quadcopters were 10 and 12 inch prop sized, weighing in around 2 or 3 pounds - all me recent ones are _much_ smaller - 6 and 5 inch props with my "light" one being just under 200g (under half a pound) and the other three in the 1 to 1.5 pound range (depending on battery size and how much gear it's got on board - gps/video adds extra weight) Tiny drones are much more common now as well - I've got a drawer full of Cheerson CX10s which weigh all of 30g or so (about an ounce). I strongly suspect the bulk of the "700,000 drones sold" are made up of devices closer to my CX10s than they are to "washing machine sized" ones capable of getting to 10,000 feet.
- dzeanah 11y ago
  That's the view of an airliner captain. There are lots of us out there flying planes whose gross weight is well under 3,000 lbs, with a windshield that's made of plastic one eighth of an inch thick. You're not necessarily wrong - I suppose it depends on how you define "overblown." Personally I have no desire to fly into a 12 lb drone at 130 miles per hour when the only thing protecting me is a thin piece of plastic. Or to have my prop destroy said drone while spinning at 2,400 RPM (which will require an engine tear-down, or possibly a 5-figure engine replacement). Or have one hit my horizontal stabilizer. All of these may lead to a crash, which can lead to 1-4 deaths. Which may be inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, but it feels significant to me.
  - lutorm 11y ago
    The point made by the airline captain, that birds outnumber drones by a vast number, applies no matter what aircraft you fly, though. Unless you're certain that your canopy will survive a birdstrike fine, it seems that the marginal risk increase is minimal.
    - dzeanah 11y ago
      If drones acted like birds and actively got the hell away from the big, loud, flying thing approaching them then I would agree with your assessment. And it's not my position that this is anything other than a marginal increase in risk; my position is simply that the risks associated with drone strikes can be quite significant.
      - Dylan16807 11y ago
        Still, many things that are both significant and marginal are not worth making a big deal out of.
      - _rob 11y ago
        You might know more as a pilot but I was under the impression that birds don't get out of the way of big loud flying things. I found a source about birds not getting out of the way for cars once the cars are beyond a certain speed, but I couldn't find anything for airplanes. http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/282/1801/20142188 http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/282/1801/2014...
tomswartz07 11y ago
There's a common joke among us multicopter pilots about DJI Phantom owners. The majority (by quite a large margin) of these 'close calls' are caused by regular Joes buying a $1000 DJI Phantom and running it with the throttle all the way open to see how high they can go. Sure, it makes for a cool shot with the camera, but it's wayyyyy far outside of the AMA and FAA guidelines of 400' altitude ceiling. Personally, I'm glad that the FAA is documenting it. I just hope that the incredibly daft actions of a few don't ruin it for the rest of us.
- danellis 11y ago
  As an owner of DJI Phantom multicopter it makes me sad to hear that we're all tarred with the same brush. Out of interest, what makes you "multicopter pilots" and other people just "owners"?
  - nathancahill 11y ago
    That's part of the knock. DJI Phantom owners are stereotypically kids (or adults) who know nothing about multicopters, but fly them around breaking all kinds of safety rules.
    - danellis 11y ago
      Does anyone know much about multicopters before they buy one? I know I didn't. Pretty much all I did was look up the regulations in various countries and then had at it.
      - tomswartz07 11y ago
        Agruably, there's a significant difference between: 1: Collecting parts, soldering them together, programming and tuning a device, learning about how it all works, failing sometimes, then being able to fly 100'+ in the air and 2: Buying a pre-built quad and skimming the FAA regulations. Unbox it and walk outside. Crank the throttle all the way to max and stare with glee as GPS keeps it at 10,000 feet right over your house.
rasz_pl 11y ago
..and not a single crash
- therobot24 11y ago
  does there need to be one in order for something to change?
  - rasz_pl 11y ago
    I just want to remind you FAA (and military) has a lot of UFO reports as well, not a single confirmed crash tho.
kctess5 11y ago
While drones colliding with aircraft is not a good thing, aren't most aircraft rated for bird strikes? It seems like most hobby level drones are approximately the same size and weight.
- sschueller 11y ago
  Birds don't carry bombs (LiPo battery) with them. [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQheOtdCTjs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQheOtdCTjs
  - Dylan16807 11y ago
    It's not really an explosion. The volatility just means the wreckage of the drone burns for a few seconds. That's not nearly as big a problem as the impact itself.
  - tomswartz07 11y ago
    LiPos don't explode. They must be seriously mishandled for some time to even become relatively unsafe. Yes, the chemical reactions are pretty vigorous, but it takes quite a lot of special cases to get it to burn.
  - Someone1234 11y ago
    "Bombs" is highly melodramatic. And at the speed that burned, it would be tens of miles behind an aircraft after the collision, and that's assuming that the impact didn't break up and spread the materials so thin that they weren't an effective hazard.
- rebootthesystem 11y ago
  Birds are made of something that a blender with a 100W motor (or less) can turn into mash in seconds. Drones are not.
  - bigiain 11y ago
    This is obviously one hell of a blender, but none of my quadcopters are anything like as tough as an iPhone: http://www.willitblend.com/videos/iphone-5s http://www.willitblend.com/videos/iphone-5s
melling 11y ago
Prior HN discussions: https://h4labs.wordpress.com/2015/07/19/dangerous-drones-daily/ https://h4labs.wordpress.com/2015/07/19/dangerous-drones-dai...
robmiller 11y ago
Interesting that a story disparaging of drones is being written in a newspaper owned by the biggest commercial proponent of the technology. What am I missing?
lutorm 11y ago
Given that aircraft fly faster (in the case of large aircraft, a lot faster) than these drones, the article's choice of words that makes it sound like the drones "buzz" aircraft seems pretty misleading. It's the aircraft that fly into the drones, not the other way around. The real issue isn't what the drones do, it's that they're around at all, because the speeds and sizes involved makes it very difficult to see and avoid them whatever they do. In that sense, they're not that different from birds. There sure are a lot more birds than drones, but on the other hand I'm not sure what the relative effect on a small aircraft from the impact of a (relatively soft) bird versus a (hard) drone is.
- Someone1234 11y ago
  Birds aren't soft at those speeds. Ultimately for both it boils down to weight (or mass if you'd prefer). In both cases the larger heavier object (aircraft) will move the smaller lighter one (birds, drones) out of its path. But damage may be done along the way. It is possible that the components could damage the inside of a jet engine, but bird bits (inc. bone) don't exactly do jet engines any favours so...
  - dheera 11y ago
    Drones might have actual metal components as well as LiPo batteries, though ...
    - acveilleux 11y ago
      And a canada goose will cause a contained failure of a CFM56 turboprop the likes of which (or equivalents) equip most B737s and A320s. The miracle on the Hudson was an A320 hitting a flock of geese on take off. The good news is that for most passenger planes, a drone ingest would be unlikely to do more than take out an engine or smash the cockpit windows. Both severe issues but issues which an airliner can be expected to survive. That said, a CFM56 engine costs somewhere around 5-10m dollars. So how do you find the drone's owner to bill them for it?
      - 11y ago
newman314 11y ago
This and the drone operators that like to fly at Cars&Coffee events. Yes, it's a great idea to fly a drone around lots of expensive cars and people without insurance, skill or experience. /sarcasm
siculars 11y ago
So what happens when someone(s) decide to automate a drone protest over a runway. Just set it and forget it. They fly till they drop and block airspace by just flying 100 ft above a runway and fly back and forth. They would be able to shut down an airport. That's what. Kinda like these folks who shit down a river. But there's no one to arrest. http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2015/08/greenpeace_protester_was_surpr.html http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2015/08/greenpe...
- kayfox 11y ago
  Thats a pretty expensive way to protest.
  - siculars 11y ago
    Not really. Drones will only get cheaper. Oh, and terrorists have virtually unlimited money. DIY drone kits with oss nav software. Cheap, untraceable, highly disruptive.
PerfectElement 11y ago
> Aviation-safety experts say that even tiny drones could trigger a disaster by crashing into a propeller or windshield, or getting sucked into a jet engine. Does it mean that birds could also cause a similar disaster?
- MaulingMonkey 11y ago
  Birds caused this: http://img.timeinc.net/time/photoessays/2009/plane_crash_redux/plane_crash_redux_01.jpg http://img.timeinc.net/time/photoessays/2009/plane_crash_red...
ams6110 11y ago
Schumer pledged to introduce legislation requiring manufacturers to install technology on all drones to prevent them from flying above 500 feet, near airports or in sensitive airspace. Such technology, known as geo- fencing, relies on satellite navigation to pinpoint a drone’s location Completely unrealistic. Such measures would be easily defeated and many hobbyist drone-builders would just omit them in the first place.
- MaulingMonkey 11y ago
  > Such measures would be easily defeated But may protect against casual negligence.
- tomswartz07 11y ago
  DJI, the company that makes a number of consumer-ready 'drones', already integrates this feature. http://www.dji.com/fly-safe/category-mc http://www.dji.com/fly-safe/category-mc
cjensen 11y ago
At the Hayward shoreline a few weeks back, a guy was using a drone. I ignored him until he buzzed the area where Snowy Plovers (an Endangered Species) hang out. Then I went over to talk to him. He was very contrite. Apparently his model has a special light that is supposed to light up in a "no fly zone." I don't know what that means, but he was in a Wildlife Refuge, directly under the flightpath for Oakland International (exactly 5 miles from the landing strip) and less than 2 miles from Hayward airport [1]. Maybe the FAA needs to publish maps for drone guys to show them where it is legal. Or maybe someone should start a Wiki showing legal and interesting place to use drones as a way of diverting drone users away from silly places while raising awareness of where not to go. [1] 37.645292 -122.155191
- maxerickson 11y ago
  They don't advertise it as complete, but the source data for this map is managed on github: https://www.mapbox.com/drone/no-fly/ https://www.mapbox.com/drone/no-fly/
  - cjensen 11y ago
    Cool. That map treats airports as points rather than areas, so the location in question is marked as clear on that map, but is no-fly in real life. Strangely, it only marks major airports. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the no-fly rules are for all airports.
    - maxerickson 11y ago
      Looking closer at the github repository, it isn't very active. It's missing the regional airport near here which should have restrictions. If you zoom in, the airports do get a 5 mile radius which, inferring from linked map in the sibling to my above comment, is not really very accurate (but does capture much of the zone).
- verelo 11y ago
  I only fly in Canada (planes mostly, sometimes drones) but the easiest way to know the rules is to use a VNC (1) (VFR map in the US (2)) to determine the airspace above / around you, lookup NOTAMS to find any exceptions and combine that with some common sense / curtesy. So really, the map already exists, but most people who are just getting into drones likely do not know it exists. (1) http://www.navcanada.ca/EN/products-and-services/Pages/aeronautical-information-products-charts-VFR-navigational-charts.aspx http://www.navcanada.ca/EN/products-and-services/Pages/aeron... (2) http://vfrmap.com/ http://vfrmap.com/

38 points by shahryc 11y ago

I think it's good that the FAA is documenting close calls with drones, however the press is a little overblown. This long time pilot views drones less of threat then geese or other large birds. That may change if drones get bigger and heavier, but all things point to drones getting smaller. A pilot's view on drones: https://jethead.wordpress.com/2015/08/08/airliners-vs-drones-calm-down/ https://jethead.wordpress.com/2015/08/08/airliners-vs-drones...

tromobne8vb 11y ago
My biggest question is what is a 'close call'? Is it something that a layperson would also agree is a close call? Some of the examples in the article don't sound too scary. "Whizzed underneath aircraft as it approached a runway" leaves a lot of room for interpretation. Other examples in the article do sound more scary, but is that just cherry picking or typical?
- acveilleux 11y ago
  Technically, the FAA defines a "near mid air collision" as an incident where there was a possibility of collisions with a proximity of less then 500 feet. Keep in mind that's an airbus A380 is approx. 240 ft. long, 260 ft. wide and 80 ft. tall. In that context, 500 ft. is actually quite close.
  - Dylan16807 11y ago
    Though in the context of drones being limited to 400 feet of altitude, the whole flight could be considered a near miss with the ground...
    - mannykannot 11y ago
      The way some people fly, it is.
mast 11y ago
I don't see signs of drones getting smaller. It seems to me they will only get bigger and heavier especially if companies like Amazon are going to be using them to deliver products.
- Mindstormy 11y ago
  In reality they will most likely go down both paths. Amazon and others looking to ship goods via drones will want something bigger, while sports enthusiasts will wants something smaller.
- bigiain 11y ago
  I'm an anecdata point for the "my drones are getting smaller" side here: My first couple of quadcopters were 10 and 12 inch prop sized, weighing in around 2 or 3 pounds - all me recent ones are _much_ smaller - 6 and 5 inch props with my "light" one being just under 200g (under half a pound) and the other three in the 1 to 1.5 pound range (depending on battery size and how much gear it's got on board - gps/video adds extra weight) Tiny drones are much more common now as well - I've got a drawer full of Cheerson CX10s which weigh all of 30g or so (about an ounce). I strongly suspect the bulk of the "700,000 drones sold" are made up of devices closer to my CX10s than they are to "washing machine sized" ones capable of getting to 10,000 feet.
dzeanah 11y ago
That's the view of an airliner captain. There are lots of us out there flying planes whose gross weight is well under 3,000 lbs, with a windshield that's made of plastic one eighth of an inch thick. You're not necessarily wrong - I suppose it depends on how you define "overblown." Personally I have no desire to fly into a 12 lb drone at 130 miles per hour when the only thing protecting me is a thin piece of plastic. Or to have my prop destroy said drone while spinning at 2,400 RPM (which will require an engine tear-down, or possibly a 5-figure engine replacement). Or have one hit my horizontal stabilizer. All of these may lead to a crash, which can lead to 1-4 deaths. Which may be inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, but it feels significant to me.
- lutorm 11y ago
  The point made by the airline captain, that birds outnumber drones by a vast number, applies no matter what aircraft you fly, though. Unless you're certain that your canopy will survive a birdstrike fine, it seems that the marginal risk increase is minimal.
  - dzeanah 11y ago
    If drones acted like birds and actively got the hell away from the big, loud, flying thing approaching them then I would agree with your assessment. And it's not my position that this is anything other than a marginal increase in risk; my position is simply that the risks associated with drone strikes can be quite significant.
    - Dylan16807 11y ago
      Still, many things that are both significant and marginal are not worth making a big deal out of.
    - _rob 11y ago
      You might know more as a pilot but I was under the impression that birds don't get out of the way of big loud flying things. I found a source about birds not getting out of the way for cars once the cars are beyond a certain speed, but I couldn't find anything for airplanes. http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/282/1801/20142188 http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/282/1801/2014...

tomswartz07 11y ago

There's a common joke among us multicopter pilots about DJI Phantom owners. The majority (by quite a large margin) of these 'close calls' are caused by regular Joes buying a $1000 DJI Phantom and running it with the throttle all the way open to see how high they can go. Sure, it makes for a cool shot with the camera, but it's wayyyyy far outside of the AMA and FAA guidelines of 400' altitude ceiling. Personally, I'm glad that the FAA is documenting it. I just hope that the incredibly daft actions of a few don't ruin it for the rest of us.

danellis 11y ago
As an owner of DJI Phantom multicopter it makes me sad to hear that we're all tarred with the same brush. Out of interest, what makes you "multicopter pilots" and other people just "owners"?
- nathancahill 11y ago
  That's part of the knock. DJI Phantom owners are stereotypically kids (or adults) who know nothing about multicopters, but fly them around breaking all kinds of safety rules.
  - danellis 11y ago
    Does anyone know much about multicopters before they buy one? I know I didn't. Pretty much all I did was look up the regulations in various countries and then had at it.
    - tomswartz07 11y ago
      Agruably, there's a significant difference between: 1: Collecting parts, soldering them together, programming and tuning a device, learning about how it all works, failing sometimes, then being able to fly 100'+ in the air and 2: Buying a pre-built quad and skimming the FAA regulations. Unbox it and walk outside. Crank the throttle all the way to max and stare with glee as GPS keeps it at 10,000 feet right over your house.

rasz_pl 11y ago

..and not a single crash

therobot24 11y ago
does there need to be one in order for something to change?
- rasz_pl 11y ago
  I just want to remind you FAA (and military) has a lot of UFO reports as well, not a single confirmed crash tho.

kctess5 11y ago

While drones colliding with aircraft is not a good thing, aren't most aircraft rated for bird strikes? It seems like most hobby level drones are approximately the same size and weight.

sschueller 11y ago
Birds don't carry bombs (LiPo battery) with them. [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQheOtdCTjs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQheOtdCTjs
- Dylan16807 11y ago
  It's not really an explosion. The volatility just means the wreckage of the drone burns for a few seconds. That's not nearly as big a problem as the impact itself.
- tomswartz07 11y ago
  LiPos don't explode. They must be seriously mishandled for some time to even become relatively unsafe. Yes, the chemical reactions are pretty vigorous, but it takes quite a lot of special cases to get it to burn.
- Someone1234 11y ago
  "Bombs" is highly melodramatic. And at the speed that burned, it would be tens of miles behind an aircraft after the collision, and that's assuming that the impact didn't break up and spread the materials so thin that they weren't an effective hazard.
rebootthesystem 11y ago
Birds are made of something that a blender with a 100W motor (or less) can turn into mash in seconds. Drones are not.
- bigiain 11y ago
  This is obviously one hell of a blender, but none of my quadcopters are anything like as tough as an iPhone: http://www.willitblend.com/videos/iphone-5s http://www.willitblend.com/videos/iphone-5s

melling 11y ago

Prior HN discussions: https://h4labs.wordpress.com/2015/07/19/dangerous-drones-daily/ https://h4labs.wordpress.com/2015/07/19/dangerous-drones-dai...

robmiller 11y ago

Interesting that a story disparaging of drones is being written in a newspaper owned by the biggest commercial proponent of the technology. What am I missing?

lutorm 11y ago

Given that aircraft fly faster (in the case of large aircraft, a lot faster) than these drones, the article's choice of words that makes it sound like the drones "buzz" aircraft seems pretty misleading. It's the aircraft that fly into the drones, not the other way around. The real issue isn't what the drones do, it's that they're around at all, because the speeds and sizes involved makes it very difficult to see and avoid them whatever they do. In that sense, they're not that different from birds. There sure are a lot more birds than drones, but on the other hand I'm not sure what the relative effect on a small aircraft from the impact of a (relatively soft) bird versus a (hard) drone is.

Someone1234 11y ago
Birds aren't soft at those speeds. Ultimately for both it boils down to weight (or mass if you'd prefer). In both cases the larger heavier object (aircraft) will move the smaller lighter one (birds, drones) out of its path. But damage may be done along the way. It is possible that the components could damage the inside of a jet engine, but bird bits (inc. bone) don't exactly do jet engines any favours so...
- dheera 11y ago
  Drones might have actual metal components as well as LiPo batteries, though ...
  - acveilleux 11y ago
    And a canada goose will cause a contained failure of a CFM56 turboprop the likes of which (or equivalents) equip most B737s and A320s. The miracle on the Hudson was an A320 hitting a flock of geese on take off. The good news is that for most passenger planes, a drone ingest would be unlikely to do more than take out an engine or smash the cockpit windows. Both severe issues but issues which an airliner can be expected to survive. That said, a CFM56 engine costs somewhere around 5-10m dollars. So how do you find the drone's owner to bill them for it?
    - 11y ago

newman314 11y ago

This and the drone operators that like to fly at Cars&Coffee events. Yes, it's a great idea to fly a drone around lots of expensive cars and people without insurance, skill or experience. /sarcasm

siculars 11y ago

So what happens when someone(s) decide to automate a drone protest over a runway. Just set it and forget it. They fly till they drop and block airspace by just flying 100 ft above a runway and fly back and forth. They would be able to shut down an airport. That's what. Kinda like these folks who shit down a river. But there's no one to arrest. http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2015/08/greenpeace_protester_was_surpr.html http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2015/08/greenpe...

kayfox 11y ago
Thats a pretty expensive way to protest.
- siculars 11y ago
  Not really. Drones will only get cheaper. Oh, and terrorists have virtually unlimited money. DIY drone kits with oss nav software. Cheap, untraceable, highly disruptive.

PerfectElement 11y ago

> Aviation-safety experts say that even tiny drones could trigger a disaster by crashing into a propeller or windshield, or getting sucked into a jet engine. Does it mean that birds could also cause a similar disaster?

MaulingMonkey 11y ago
Birds caused this: http://img.timeinc.net/time/photoessays/2009/plane_crash_redux/plane_crash_redux_01.jpg http://img.timeinc.net/time/photoessays/2009/plane_crash_red...

ams6110 11y ago

Schumer pledged to introduce legislation requiring manufacturers to install technology on all drones to prevent them from flying above 500 feet, near airports or in sensitive airspace. Such technology, known as geo- fencing, relies on satellite navigation to pinpoint a drone’s location Completely unrealistic. Such measures would be easily defeated and many hobbyist drone-builders would just omit them in the first place.

MaulingMonkey 11y ago
> Such measures would be easily defeated But may protect against casual negligence.
tomswartz07 11y ago
DJI, the company that makes a number of consumer-ready 'drones', already integrates this feature. http://www.dji.com/fly-safe/category-mc http://www.dji.com/fly-safe/category-mc

cjensen 11y ago

At the Hayward shoreline a few weeks back, a guy was using a drone. I ignored him until he buzzed the area where Snowy Plovers (an Endangered Species) hang out. Then I went over to talk to him. He was very contrite. Apparently his model has a special light that is supposed to light up in a "no fly zone." I don't know what that means, but he was in a Wildlife Refuge, directly under the flightpath for Oakland International (exactly 5 miles from the landing strip) and less than 2 miles from Hayward airport [1]. Maybe the FAA needs to publish maps for drone guys to show them where it is legal. Or maybe someone should start a Wiki showing legal and interesting place to use drones as a way of diverting drone users away from silly places while raising awareness of where not to go. [1] 37.645292 -122.155191

maxerickson 11y ago
They don't advertise it as complete, but the source data for this map is managed on github: https://www.mapbox.com/drone/no-fly/ https://www.mapbox.com/drone/no-fly/
- cjensen 11y ago
  Cool. That map treats airports as points rather than areas, so the location in question is marked as clear on that map, but is no-fly in real life. Strangely, it only marks major airports. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the no-fly rules are for all airports.
  - maxerickson 11y ago
    Looking closer at the github repository, it isn't very active. It's missing the regional airport near here which should have restrictions. If you zoom in, the airports do get a 5 mile radius which, inferring from linked map in the sibling to my above comment, is not really very accurate (but does capture much of the zone).
verelo 11y ago
I only fly in Canada (planes mostly, sometimes drones) but the easiest way to know the rules is to use a VNC (1) (VFR map in the US (2)) to determine the airspace above / around you, lookup NOTAMS to find any exceptions and combine that with some common sense / curtesy. So really, the map already exists, but most people who are just getting into drones likely do not know it exists. (1) http://www.navcanada.ca/EN/products-and-services/Pages/aeronautical-information-products-charts-VFR-navigational-charts.aspx http://www.navcanada.ca/EN/products-and-services/Pages/aeron... (2) http://vfrmap.com/ http://vfrmap.com/