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Researchers say FAA is overblowing risk posed by small drones

98 points by pavornyoh 11y ago

merpnderp 11y ago
I for one am shocked, shocked, that a government agency would misinterpret the data to create arbitrary rules and law enforcement opportunities.
kylehotchkiss 11y ago
This article seems too statistics-y and not practical: * Drones have interfered with firefighting activities in California before * There's a difference between a jet sucking in a drone at cruise altitude (somebody got a cheaper model up 11000 feet last week, so not out of the question one of these days) and a jet at critical speeds (landing or taking off) sucking in a drone. Also, a drone into a windshield could cause panic in a pilot, a cause similar to the 2014 derailment (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Philadelphia_train_derailment#Investigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Philadelphia_train_derail...). A drone could probably do a number on a radome or pitot tube as well, which wouldn't cause a terrible situation but an expensive fix. * My friend who is a drone hobbiest has told me several stories of his drone "falling out of the sky" due to improper battery management. While newer drones address this with autoland, a sudden power failure still means a heavy piece of metal and plastic barreling out of the sky. * People have a poor comprehension of 3d space from the ground. As drones get faster, operators could experience more tunnel vision trying to avoid an immediate collision and face a collision in their "blind spot" I think FAA trying to make _some_ regulations for this is okay, just like I think the FCC regulating radio communications is okay (so you can't hear some 15 year olds radio chatter when you watch TV-highly illegal but technically possible if you built your own transmitter before TV went digital). A drone into an engine is not very likely to happen, but that's not the only bad thing a flying toy that can go up to 55mph can do.
- bsder 11y ago
  > Drones have interfered with firefighting activities in California before Exactly. Bird statistics don't mean anything in this case because jackasses are flying the drones in "interesting" areas rather than random areas. Having to have an FAA license that shows you understand airspace and its laws is not an undue restriction.
- strathmeyer 11y ago
  > Drones have interfered with firefighting activities in California before Are you sure?? Every story about this turns out to be FUD. Airports use drones to scare away the birds. Whenever there is a story of a pilot spotting a drone.... they forget to mention if they figured out if it belonged to the airport.
  - jonesb6 11y ago
    I've seen video footage of it. Don't have the link but it was bad enough to throw me into a fit of rage at the drone operators. There were like three or four drones flying directly in the path of a prop plane dropping some kind of retardant on a forest fire.
    - the_ancient 11y ago
      >bad enough to throw me into a fit of rage at the drone operators. Then I would advise you to seek anger management help as soon as possible
- patcheudor 11y ago
  >I think FAA trying to make _some_ regulations for this is okay... YES! I recently built an acro/FPV hexacopter and am all for my right to fly, however, I understand I have some responsibilities when doing so and the FAA spelling out those responsibilities isn't a bad thing. Unfortunately others don't quite "get it" in quite the same way and pose a serious risk without rules and the threat of law. As an example, someone I'm associated with decided he'd take his new DJI out of the box on Christmas, toss in a newly charged battery (the most likely to fail in my experience) and have it follow his car from his house to town in a small community via the autonomous flight option. Along the way of course it flew within a mile of an airport, directly across the flight-path for the takeoff runway, without him even having eyes on his craft. He got excited and shared the video and of course everyone who knew anything about RC flight freaked out. He never understood any of the concern and thinks everyone was overblowing the situation and it was absolutely okay because DJI has an airport database. The problem is of course, that airport database doesn't contain listings for every airport. That and you should never toss a multi-rotor in the air without direct line of sight or a spotter for the entire flight and expect things will go as planned.
- jjoonathan 11y ago
  * Drones have interfered with firefighting activities in California before That's what you would think from reading the headlines. "Hobbyists Imperil California Firefighters", "Firefighter-interrupting Drone Pilots...", "Drones Are Getting In The Way of Firefighters", "Drones impede air battle against Californian wildfires", etc. Here's a description of what actually happened: > On the evening of June 24, he recalls, they noticed a drone. The aerial attack was immediately called off, out of fear of a midair collision; the three air tankers attacking the Lake Fire were parked the rest of the day. And the fire grew as a result. A helicopter pilot saw a drone and grounded the helicopters. The papers took a judgment call and twisted it into a story of active interference between drone and helicopter. And even that makes the generous assumption that this was an honest judgment call and not an intentional (and highly successful) attempt to grandstand. While most reasonable people would agree that drones need to be regulated in some form, I'm afraid that they will be regulated with the goal of restricting their use rather than of ensuring people take reasonable precautions to reduce risk.
  - maxerickson 11y ago
    I dunno, I think the people fighting a forest fire have a point when they say that they do not want to deal with some guy taking video (what better justification could the drone operator have?).
    - jjoonathan 11y ago
      Imagine a hypothetical headline: "Black cat steps on mirror, firefighters let house burn for fear of upsetting spirits." This would probably upset you and your frustration would probably not be aimed at the cat. Let this be one end of a spectrum and put "drone interferes with firefighting helicopter" at the other end. I don't see one vested interest's hunch as strong evidence that reality lies near to one end or another of this spectrum.
      - maxerickson 11y ago
        I don't understand what you are getting at. What's the equivalence between a random black cat on a mirror and an intentionally operated drone? If there was some meaningful need for random everybody to operate drones by forest fires, I might care that the pilots are serving some weird agenda, but I don't see any need for (especially private, unregistered, non-communicating) drones to operate near forest fires, so I don't even care if the pilots are just objecting for the lulz.
- lutorm 11y ago
  This article seems too statistics-y ... Except that safety is a statistical problem. The question is always whether the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. The FAA actually recognizes this. For example, you can build an airplane yourself for your own recreational use without having to comply with almost any of the rules for certified airplanes that are sold commercially, the rationale being that you know what you're getting into and you're risking mostly harm to yourself. However, when it comes to risks imposed by third parties, like buying an airplane from a manufacturer, or an airplane being endangered by people on the ground as is the case with drones or people pointing lasers at airplanes, they are much more conservative. And I think that makes sense.
- rasz_pl 11y ago
  NO they DIDNT. Presence of one drone lead to scared people with agenda grounding whole operation. Do they ground those same planes in presence of birds?
Johnny555 11y ago
There's no downside to the FAA for overblowing risks -- just like they've overblown the risk of cell phone use for years. Even if there's one chance in a million of a cell phone affecting avionics or a small drone damaging a plane, the FAA's job is to minimize that risk. They aren't responsible for cost or inconvenience to anyone outside of the aviation industry. They wouldn't mandate that Boeing install expensive and complicated parachutes in every plane due to the huge cost to the industry and dubious benefit, but there's really no drawback to the FAA for imposing a drone ban.
- kylehotchkiss 11y ago
  genuinely curious (not trying to pick at your point at all), how many USA plane crashes could have been prevented if a parachute was present and working? (The amount of instant drag that parachute deploying would product at a jet's stall speed (> 150mph) is probably more than a fuselage would handle well, given the lightweight engineering.)
  - artmageddon 11y ago
    Depends; are we talking about small engine planes or big jet liners? Some Cirrus aircraft have them, but that's only one particular brand. As for larger aircraft, I'll refer to this link below [0]: "taking into consideration the added complexity of design, installing and maintaining an emergency parachute system for a typical passenger jet, the amount of revenue lost by carrying at least 40-45 fewer passengers to compensate for installing such a heavy system, and the extremely unlikelihood such a recovery ever would be required, I can't see trying to scale up a parachute recovery capability for airliner use." https://www.quora.com/Why-dont-airplanes-have-giant-parachutes-attached-to-them-to-save-the-plane-and-its-passengers-in-times-of-emergency https://www.quora.com/Why-dont-airplanes-have-giant-parachut...
  - fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
    >how many USA plane crashes could have been prevented if a parachute was present and working? None! But it could potentially have prevented a lot of the fatalities.
  - 11y ago
TrevorJ 11y ago
I'm a bit torn about this. I almost always come down on the side of 'less red tape' but I strongly suspect that putting in place a lightweight licensing framework for drone pilots is the best way to ensure the greatest amount of freedom for hobbyists going forward. The other alternative is no regulation at all, and wait for the inevitable idiot to cause an incident and then the whole enterprise gets shut down as a knee-jerk reaction.
- dbcurtis 11y ago
  It is interesting to compare drones to the state of wireless a century ago. 100 years ago, every hacker with access to an oatmeal can and an old Model T spark coil was building a spark-gap transmitter. There was no licensing. It was pretty crazy with commercial wireless companies trying to contact ships at sea, the Navy, and hackers all on top of each other. So, the Commerce Department regulated radio. It basically outlawed personal wireless. The "hams" put up a fuss, and the government gave them everything from "200 meters and down", subject to a license. This is because all the World Famous Professors had said that any wavelength shorter than 200 meters was completely useless and of no value. The hams whined a bit, but then got on with discovering short wave propagation. At which point, most of the short wave spectrum was taken away from them, but they were able to retain slivers this time. So here we are again. Hackers have cool technology. Government takes it away as much as they can get away with, licenses a little bit back to the hackers. Next move: hackers. The cycle continues.
  - TrevorJ 11y ago
    That's an interesting point. I think there's definitely a give and take on both sides here and good points to be made all around.
andrewstuart2 11y ago
I'm not sure they've demonstrated adequate support that a bird strike can be equated to a drone collision. Drones are plastic and metal, versus the very light and porous structure of avian bones and musculature. Additionally, you can't just do this sort of probability calculation when the human operator is an integral part of the equation. Birds don't fly in an area limited by their operator. And birds aren't (as far as we know) going to try to fly their drone over an airport (for one example) to get some unique footage that has market value. This really seems like a vast oversimplification of the issue at hand. I'd much rather see them firing a drone out of a canon at high velocity into an aircraft cockpit (a la MythBusters chicken gun) to show what the actual damage of a comparable drone strike would be rather than just assuming "drone == small bird" based purely on a mass of 2kg.
- niccaluim 11y ago
  Birds also know how to dodge airplanes. The correct response to a collision course with a flock of birds—a situation I've been in on final more than a few times—is not to try to maneuver out of the way. Birds will always dive or climb as they close with the airplane.
  - lutorm 11y ago
    "always" seems like a bit of an overstatement there, given that bird strikes in fact do happen, even to small GA aircraft.
    - niccaluim 11y ago
      I didn't say they always miss, just that they always dive or climb. ;) But trying to out-maneuver them will pretty much guarantee a collision.
artmageddon 11y ago
I'm all for the advancement of drone technology, and I think that the FAA was perhaps a little too conservative with the way they handled the usage of cell phones on flights for quite sometime, but I can't blame them for their stance on small drones as they don't want to bear any responsibility for the loss of life due to some miniscule probability of a phone causing a problem in-flight. It's worth looking at a the cause of the Flight 1549 incident: "the bird encounter occurred at 3:27:11, when the airplane was at an altitude of 2,818 feet (859 m) above ground level (agl) and a distance of about 4.5 miles (7.2 km) north-northwest of the approach end of Runway 22 at LGA." [0] This could've easily been a drone which caused the incident. Now, it's possible that the FAA can put limits on drones(e.g. 400ft AGL or whatever it is now), but there may be people who attempt to circumvent this. The fact that people will shine laser beams into flight decks from the ground doesn't inspire confidence that people will respect their usage in high traffic areas. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Airways_Flight_1549 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Airways_Flight_1549
- pravda 11y ago
  Well, it would have to be a swarm of drones. I don't think it was one bird that took out both engines.
godgod 11y ago
Obviously. The FAA wants to control the use of drones from day 1. Registering wasn't about safety. It was about control.
danielvf 11y ago
The Miracle on the Hudson airliner took four 14 lb geese into the engines which was clearly too much. But it would have been able to land at an airport if the damage had been restricted to one engine. FAA standards require airliners be able to safely withstand a 4 lb bird strike. By comparison, a DJI Phantom drone weighs around 2 lbs and is unlike to be flying in dense enough flocks to damage both engines.
- cmurf 11y ago
  Why is foreign object mass alone more relevant than its mass and density when it comes to ensuring turbine engine containment in an ingestion event? Bird have a known density. Drones have variable density. And since the tests thus far are done with birds I think it's unknown what happens when drone X is ingested into a turbine engine. The other fallacy is comparing birds were have minimal control over, vs man made aircraft that should be as capable of avoidance as the current regime.
  - danielvf 11y ago
    Turbine engine containment isn't about containing the foreign object - it's about containing the ludicrously energized turbine blades. What breaks the blades is almost irrelevant. I'm more concerned about damage to the non engine areas of the aircraft, but they routinely survive 18 lb bird impacts in the wild. Even with lithium batteries being about four times denser than a bird, the weight being so much less means that the penetrating power should be less than a half that of a goose.
- neurotech1 11y ago
  What brought down Flight 1549 was damage to the core of both engines. If the birds just damaged the fans, then the aircraft probably would have been able to return and land safely. I'd be more concerned about a DJI Phantom type drone going through the windscreen of a light aircraft and injuring the pilot.
maxcan 11y ago
This "research" has a glaring statistical error, principally that the researchers assumed that UAV locations are either uniformly distributed or follow the same distributions as birds. The problem, especially for small aircraft, is that the sites which attract concentrations of small aircraft - like Golden Gate Bridge, Hudson River, etc, are the same places which attract UAV operators. Also, they seem to neglect the growth in populations of UAV. UAVs are exploding in popularity and capabilities. These numbers are going to get worse and the FAA is taking its usual caution-first approach.
- ArkyBeagle 11y ago
  They are very very thorough and cautious. That's probably what we want, ultimately.
- Houshalter 11y ago
  I wonder what the true risk of flying a drone is. Lets say their number is 50 times greater than realistic. The 1.87 million years divided by 50 would be a more reasonable 37,400 years of flight time per accident. Assuming every plane has 200 passengers, that's about, or about 6.105×10^-7 deaths per hour of flight time. If I did my math right, that means it's about 0.6 micromorts per hour. By comparison, the average person has about 1.6 micromorts of unnatural causes of death per day, so it is a fairly large relative increase in risk. If you were to require every drone operator to pay for insurance, assuming an economic value of life at about $9.1 million, then it would cost $5.56 per hour of flight time. Not cheap!
  - matheweis 11y ago
    As with many things, there are a number of factors. Just of few of these include the weight and speed of the drone, the location that it is being flown, the competency of the operator, and so on... You're also assuming that a drone vs aircraft incident would result in the complete loss of the aircraft. I would imagine that we will eventually see such an incident, but it probably won't result in catastrophic loss...
    - 11y ago
NelsonMinar 11y ago
The FAA is a famously risk-adverse organization. But there's a huge cost to that conservatism; the FAA's foot-dragging has stalled the unmanned aircraft industry in the United States. There's a lot of commercial value in drones for things like agricultural surveys. FAA did finally take one baby step towards legitimizing commercial drone use but it's not nearly enough.
- ghaff 11y ago
  Commercial air travel is also incredibly safe--due in part to said conservatism.
dirktheman 11y ago
I'm a big drone enthousiast. I'm all for some form of regulation in the form of registration or a license, provided that the cost won't prohibit getting into the hobby too much. However, I'm afraid it's not going to work. The people that do crazy stupid things with their drones are the same people that buy their RTF drone at Walmart, thinking it's just a toy. Or import it from China. You can't regulate that. There have been adequate rules for decades, for instance that you can't fly near airfields with your RC plane. Until a couple of years ago, flying RC planes was both rather expensive to get into, but there was also a steep learning curve. Nowadays you can buy a drone for under 200 bucks and it will practically fly itself. Anyone with half a brain can fly it. I'm torn about this. I love the fact that the entry point for getting into the hobby is lowered so more people can enjoy flying. OTOH, the entry point is now so low that there is a large group of people who are hurting the hobby with their thoughtless behaviour. A couple of months ago I saw an ad for the Lily drone, I'm sure you saw it too. In the ad they launch and land BY HAND. If you value your fingers I wouldn't recommend this, it's really dangerous. It's a bit like gun control in a fictional state where you can buy guns without a permit. You can regulate and registrate all you want, but that won't stop loonies from doing stupid things.
Mikeb85 11y ago
The low probability of an incident is outweighed by the potential damage caused by an incident (large loss of life).
cs2818 11y ago
When will actual testing be conducted on this? My understanding is that bird strike tests are conducted against jet engines. Am I missing something that prevents us from conducting a few tests with these everyday "drones"? I have seen some experts speculating that apart from hitting the windscreen, a collision would not lead to complete catastrophe [1]. Regardless, I personally support these regulations, but would really like to see the outcome of a few empirical tests. [1] http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/drones/what-might-happen-if-airliner-hit-small-drone http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/drones/what-migh...
sathackr 11y ago
I don't know what the new proposed regulations are, but, for recreational use, I think the current set are fair and appropriate: Don't fly outside your unaided line of sight. Don't intentionally fly over people. Stay away from sensitive areas (Stadiums, etc...) Don't fly near an airport without contacting the airport. Stay under 400ft Register it and label it, so that if it does fall and hit someone on the head, they can find you and let our legal system handle the repercussions. Given the lack of inspection, that most of these rolled off an assembly line in China, have Lipo batteries that are prone to instantly shutting off if malfunctioning or overloaded(to prevent runaway thermal effect) meaning that these likely might fall out of the sky at any time, the restriction on flying within line of sight and not over people seems reasonable, along with the sensitive area restriction. I can't think of a major recreational use for flying over 400ft AGL, besides wanting to snap a picture of your neighborhood from the air. The most heavy handed one I can think of (and this one is enforced in DJI firmware) is the airport restriction. The official line is 'Don't fly within 5 miles of an airport without contacting the airport' -- There are enough airports that this covers a good bit of area, and, if a plane is below 500ft more than a mile or so from the airport, drones are probably not going to put it at any more risk. A DJI drone will not leave the ground if it detects it's within a couple miles of an airport's radius, and there is no way to override it, even with the airport's consent. The commercial regulations, as I understand them, are a bit more ridiculous. I haven't found the relevent text in the CFR, but I'm told that to fly a drone commercially(say, for a photographer to take pictures at a wedding) actually requires a full blown pilot's license, at least a 'sport pilots license'[1]. This seems a bit ridiculous for a photographer flying a drone 10ft above the ground. I hope some changes to this portion are coming. [1] http://uavcoach.com/drone-certification/#pilot http://uavcoach.com/drone-certification/#pilot
- tibbon 11y ago
  I agree, the airport restriction is heavy. It isn't really '5 miles of an airport' but just not 'in regulated airspace', which is frequently around 5 miles around an airport. Sadly, there's no provision for just flying under 100 feet.
  - sathackr 11y ago
deleted 11y ago
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rkangel 11y ago
The FAA isn't looking at the current level of risk - they're looking at the trajectory of that risk. The number of drones is rising rapidly and they're trying to get ahead of the problem before there's a serious incident. Can you imagine the headlines if they ignored the problem and even a single seater light aircraft was brought down? The results of a study by the "Academy of Model Aeronautics" is probably fairly predictable, likely to have some bias (in the same way that a study by the FAA is likely to have bias the other way). The FAA is aware that drones are not the same as birds. I remember recently reading that the FAA has commissioned a study into the effect of drone strikes and how the damage might be mitigated, but I now can't find the reference.
anentropic 11y ago
Better than they underestimate it

98 points by pavornyoh 11y ago

I for one am shocked, shocked, that a government agency would misinterpret the data to create arbitrary rules and law enforcement opportunities.

kylehotchkiss 11y ago

This article seems too statistics-y and not practical: * Drones have interfered with firefighting activities in California before * There's a difference between a jet sucking in a drone at cruise altitude (somebody got a cheaper model up 11000 feet last week, so not out of the question one of these days) and a jet at critical speeds (landing or taking off) sucking in a drone. Also, a drone into a windshield could cause panic in a pilot, a cause similar to the 2014 derailment (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Philadelphia_train_derailment#Investigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Philadelphia_train_derail...). A drone could probably do a number on a radome or pitot tube as well, which wouldn't cause a terrible situation but an expensive fix. * My friend who is a drone hobbiest has told me several stories of his drone "falling out of the sky" due to improper battery management. While newer drones address this with autoland, a sudden power failure still means a heavy piece of metal and plastic barreling out of the sky. * People have a poor comprehension of 3d space from the ground. As drones get faster, operators could experience more tunnel vision trying to avoid an immediate collision and face a collision in their "blind spot" I think FAA trying to make _some_ regulations for this is okay, just like I think the FCC regulating radio communications is okay (so you can't hear some 15 year olds radio chatter when you watch TV-highly illegal but technically possible if you built your own transmitter before TV went digital). A drone into an engine is not very likely to happen, but that's not the only bad thing a flying toy that can go up to 55mph can do.

bsder 11y ago
> Drones have interfered with firefighting activities in California before Exactly. Bird statistics don't mean anything in this case because jackasses are flying the drones in "interesting" areas rather than random areas. Having to have an FAA license that shows you understand airspace and its laws is not an undue restriction.
strathmeyer 11y ago
> Drones have interfered with firefighting activities in California before Are you sure?? Every story about this turns out to be FUD. Airports use drones to scare away the birds. Whenever there is a story of a pilot spotting a drone.... they forget to mention if they figured out if it belonged to the airport.
- jonesb6 11y ago
  I've seen video footage of it. Don't have the link but it was bad enough to throw me into a fit of rage at the drone operators. There were like three or four drones flying directly in the path of a prop plane dropping some kind of retardant on a forest fire.
  - the_ancient 11y ago
    >bad enough to throw me into a fit of rage at the drone operators. Then I would advise you to seek anger management help as soon as possible
patcheudor 11y ago
>I think FAA trying to make _some_ regulations for this is okay... YES! I recently built an acro/FPV hexacopter and am all for my right to fly, however, I understand I have some responsibilities when doing so and the FAA spelling out those responsibilities isn't a bad thing. Unfortunately others don't quite "get it" in quite the same way and pose a serious risk without rules and the threat of law. As an example, someone I'm associated with decided he'd take his new DJI out of the box on Christmas, toss in a newly charged battery (the most likely to fail in my experience) and have it follow his car from his house to town in a small community via the autonomous flight option. Along the way of course it flew within a mile of an airport, directly across the flight-path for the takeoff runway, without him even having eyes on his craft. He got excited and shared the video and of course everyone who knew anything about RC flight freaked out. He never understood any of the concern and thinks everyone was overblowing the situation and it was absolutely okay because DJI has an airport database. The problem is of course, that airport database doesn't contain listings for every airport. That and you should never toss a multi-rotor in the air without direct line of sight or a spotter for the entire flight and expect things will go as planned.
jjoonathan 11y ago
* Drones have interfered with firefighting activities in California before That's what you would think from reading the headlines. "Hobbyists Imperil California Firefighters", "Firefighter-interrupting Drone Pilots...", "Drones Are Getting In The Way of Firefighters", "Drones impede air battle against Californian wildfires", etc. Here's a description of what actually happened: > On the evening of June 24, he recalls, they noticed a drone. The aerial attack was immediately called off, out of fear of a midair collision; the three air tankers attacking the Lake Fire were parked the rest of the day. And the fire grew as a result. A helicopter pilot saw a drone and grounded the helicopters. The papers took a judgment call and twisted it into a story of active interference between drone and helicopter. And even that makes the generous assumption that this was an honest judgment call and not an intentional (and highly successful) attempt to grandstand. While most reasonable people would agree that drones need to be regulated in some form, I'm afraid that they will be regulated with the goal of restricting their use rather than of ensuring people take reasonable precautions to reduce risk.
- maxerickson 11y ago
  I dunno, I think the people fighting a forest fire have a point when they say that they do not want to deal with some guy taking video (what better justification could the drone operator have?).
  - jjoonathan 11y ago
    Imagine a hypothetical headline: "Black cat steps on mirror, firefighters let house burn for fear of upsetting spirits." This would probably upset you and your frustration would probably not be aimed at the cat. Let this be one end of a spectrum and put "drone interferes with firefighting helicopter" at the other end. I don't see one vested interest's hunch as strong evidence that reality lies near to one end or another of this spectrum.
    - maxerickson 11y ago
      I don't understand what you are getting at. What's the equivalence between a random black cat on a mirror and an intentionally operated drone? If there was some meaningful need for random everybody to operate drones by forest fires, I might care that the pilots are serving some weird agenda, but I don't see any need for (especially private, unregistered, non-communicating) drones to operate near forest fires, so I don't even care if the pilots are just objecting for the lulz.
lutorm 11y ago
This article seems too statistics-y ... Except that safety is a statistical problem. The question is always whether the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. The FAA actually recognizes this. For example, you can build an airplane yourself for your own recreational use without having to comply with almost any of the rules for certified airplanes that are sold commercially, the rationale being that you know what you're getting into and you're risking mostly harm to yourself. However, when it comes to risks imposed by third parties, like buying an airplane from a manufacturer, or an airplane being endangered by people on the ground as is the case with drones or people pointing lasers at airplanes, they are much more conservative. And I think that makes sense.
rasz_pl 11y ago
NO they DIDNT. Presence of one drone lead to scared people with agenda grounding whole operation. Do they ground those same planes in presence of birds?

Johnny555 11y ago

There's no downside to the FAA for overblowing risks -- just like they've overblown the risk of cell phone use for years. Even if there's one chance in a million of a cell phone affecting avionics or a small drone damaging a plane, the FAA's job is to minimize that risk. They aren't responsible for cost or inconvenience to anyone outside of the aviation industry. They wouldn't mandate that Boeing install expensive and complicated parachutes in every plane due to the huge cost to the industry and dubious benefit, but there's really no drawback to the FAA for imposing a drone ban.

kylehotchkiss 11y ago
genuinely curious (not trying to pick at your point at all), how many USA plane crashes could have been prevented if a parachute was present and working? (The amount of instant drag that parachute deploying would product at a jet's stall speed (> 150mph) is probably more than a fuselage would handle well, given the lightweight engineering.)
- artmageddon 11y ago
  Depends; are we talking about small engine planes or big jet liners? Some Cirrus aircraft have them, but that's only one particular brand. As for larger aircraft, I'll refer to this link below [0]: "taking into consideration the added complexity of design, installing and maintaining an emergency parachute system for a typical passenger jet, the amount of revenue lost by carrying at least 40-45 fewer passengers to compensate for installing such a heavy system, and the extremely unlikelihood such a recovery ever would be required, I can't see trying to scale up a parachute recovery capability for airliner use." https://www.quora.com/Why-dont-airplanes-have-giant-parachutes-attached-to-them-to-save-the-plane-and-its-passengers-in-times-of-emergency https://www.quora.com/Why-dont-airplanes-have-giant-parachut...
- fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
  >how many USA plane crashes could have been prevented if a parachute was present and working? None! But it could potentially have prevented a lot of the fatalities.
- 11y ago

TrevorJ 11y ago

I'm a bit torn about this. I almost always come down on the side of 'less red tape' but I strongly suspect that putting in place a lightweight licensing framework for drone pilots is the best way to ensure the greatest amount of freedom for hobbyists going forward. The other alternative is no regulation at all, and wait for the inevitable idiot to cause an incident and then the whole enterprise gets shut down as a knee-jerk reaction.

dbcurtis 11y ago
It is interesting to compare drones to the state of wireless a century ago. 100 years ago, every hacker with access to an oatmeal can and an old Model T spark coil was building a spark-gap transmitter. There was no licensing. It was pretty crazy with commercial wireless companies trying to contact ships at sea, the Navy, and hackers all on top of each other. So, the Commerce Department regulated radio. It basically outlawed personal wireless. The "hams" put up a fuss, and the government gave them everything from "200 meters and down", subject to a license. This is because all the World Famous Professors had said that any wavelength shorter than 200 meters was completely useless and of no value. The hams whined a bit, but then got on with discovering short wave propagation. At which point, most of the short wave spectrum was taken away from them, but they were able to retain slivers this time. So here we are again. Hackers have cool technology. Government takes it away as much as they can get away with, licenses a little bit back to the hackers. Next move: hackers. The cycle continues.
- TrevorJ 11y ago
  That's an interesting point. I think there's definitely a give and take on both sides here and good points to be made all around.

andrewstuart2 11y ago

I'm not sure they've demonstrated adequate support that a bird strike can be equated to a drone collision. Drones are plastic and metal, versus the very light and porous structure of avian bones and musculature. Additionally, you can't just do this sort of probability calculation when the human operator is an integral part of the equation. Birds don't fly in an area limited by their operator. And birds aren't (as far as we know) going to try to fly their drone over an airport (for one example) to get some unique footage that has market value. This really seems like a vast oversimplification of the issue at hand. I'd much rather see them firing a drone out of a canon at high velocity into an aircraft cockpit (a la MythBusters chicken gun) to show what the actual damage of a comparable drone strike would be rather than just assuming "drone == small bird" based purely on a mass of 2kg.

niccaluim 11y ago
Birds also know how to dodge airplanes. The correct response to a collision course with a flock of birds—a situation I've been in on final more than a few times—is not to try to maneuver out of the way. Birds will always dive or climb as they close with the airplane.
- lutorm 11y ago
  "always" seems like a bit of an overstatement there, given that bird strikes in fact do happen, even to small GA aircraft.
  - niccaluim 11y ago
    I didn't say they always miss, just that they always dive or climb. ;) But trying to out-maneuver them will pretty much guarantee a collision.

artmageddon 11y ago

I'm all for the advancement of drone technology, and I think that the FAA was perhaps a little too conservative with the way they handled the usage of cell phones on flights for quite sometime, but I can't blame them for their stance on small drones as they don't want to bear any responsibility for the loss of life due to some miniscule probability of a phone causing a problem in-flight. It's worth looking at a the cause of the Flight 1549 incident: "the bird encounter occurred at 3:27:11, when the airplane was at an altitude of 2,818 feet (859 m) above ground level (agl) and a distance of about 4.5 miles (7.2 km) north-northwest of the approach end of Runway 22 at LGA." [0] This could've easily been a drone which caused the incident. Now, it's possible that the FAA can put limits on drones(e.g. 400ft AGL or whatever it is now), but there may be people who attempt to circumvent this. The fact that people will shine laser beams into flight decks from the ground doesn't inspire confidence that people will respect their usage in high traffic areas. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Airways_Flight_1549 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Airways_Flight_1549

pravda 11y ago
Well, it would have to be a swarm of drones. I don't think it was one bird that took out both engines.

godgod 11y ago

Obviously. The FAA wants to control the use of drones from day 1. Registering wasn't about safety. It was about control.

danielvf 11y ago

The Miracle on the Hudson airliner took four 14 lb geese into the engines which was clearly too much. But it would have been able to land at an airport if the damage had been restricted to one engine. FAA standards require airliners be able to safely withstand a 4 lb bird strike. By comparison, a DJI Phantom drone weighs around 2 lbs and is unlike to be flying in dense enough flocks to damage both engines.

cmurf 11y ago
Why is foreign object mass alone more relevant than its mass and density when it comes to ensuring turbine engine containment in an ingestion event? Bird have a known density. Drones have variable density. And since the tests thus far are done with birds I think it's unknown what happens when drone X is ingested into a turbine engine. The other fallacy is comparing birds were have minimal control over, vs man made aircraft that should be as capable of avoidance as the current regime.
- danielvf 11y ago
  Turbine engine containment isn't about containing the foreign object - it's about containing the ludicrously energized turbine blades. What breaks the blades is almost irrelevant. I'm more concerned about damage to the non engine areas of the aircraft, but they routinely survive 18 lb bird impacts in the wild. Even with lithium batteries being about four times denser than a bird, the weight being so much less means that the penetrating power should be less than a half that of a goose.
neurotech1 11y ago
What brought down Flight 1549 was damage to the core of both engines. If the birds just damaged the fans, then the aircraft probably would have been able to return and land safely. I'd be more concerned about a DJI Phantom type drone going through the windscreen of a light aircraft and injuring the pilot.

maxcan 11y ago

This "research" has a glaring statistical error, principally that the researchers assumed that UAV locations are either uniformly distributed or follow the same distributions as birds. The problem, especially for small aircraft, is that the sites which attract concentrations of small aircraft - like Golden Gate Bridge, Hudson River, etc, are the same places which attract UAV operators. Also, they seem to neglect the growth in populations of UAV. UAVs are exploding in popularity and capabilities. These numbers are going to get worse and the FAA is taking its usual caution-first approach.

ArkyBeagle 11y ago
They are very very thorough and cautious. That's probably what we want, ultimately.
Houshalter 11y ago
I wonder what the true risk of flying a drone is. Lets say their number is 50 times greater than realistic. The 1.87 million years divided by 50 would be a more reasonable 37,400 years of flight time per accident. Assuming every plane has 200 passengers, that's about, or about 6.105×10^-7 deaths per hour of flight time. If I did my math right, that means it's about 0.6 micromorts per hour. By comparison, the average person has about 1.6 micromorts of unnatural causes of death per day, so it is a fairly large relative increase in risk. If you were to require every drone operator to pay for insurance, assuming an economic value of life at about $9.1 million, then it would cost $5.56 per hour of flight time. Not cheap!
- matheweis 11y ago
  As with many things, there are a number of factors. Just of few of these include the weight and speed of the drone, the location that it is being flown, the competency of the operator, and so on... You're also assuming that a drone vs aircraft incident would result in the complete loss of the aircraft. I would imagine that we will eventually see such an incident, but it probably won't result in catastrophic loss...
  - 11y ago

NelsonMinar 11y ago

The FAA is a famously risk-adverse organization. But there's a huge cost to that conservatism; the FAA's foot-dragging has stalled the unmanned aircraft industry in the United States. There's a lot of commercial value in drones for things like agricultural surveys. FAA did finally take one baby step towards legitimizing commercial drone use but it's not nearly enough.

ghaff 11y ago
Commercial air travel is also incredibly safe--due in part to said conservatism.

dirktheman 11y ago

I'm a big drone enthousiast. I'm all for some form of regulation in the form of registration or a license, provided that the cost won't prohibit getting into the hobby too much. However, I'm afraid it's not going to work. The people that do crazy stupid things with their drones are the same people that buy their RTF drone at Walmart, thinking it's just a toy. Or import it from China. You can't regulate that. There have been adequate rules for decades, for instance that you can't fly near airfields with your RC plane. Until a couple of years ago, flying RC planes was both rather expensive to get into, but there was also a steep learning curve. Nowadays you can buy a drone for under 200 bucks and it will practically fly itself. Anyone with half a brain can fly it. I'm torn about this. I love the fact that the entry point for getting into the hobby is lowered so more people can enjoy flying. OTOH, the entry point is now so low that there is a large group of people who are hurting the hobby with their thoughtless behaviour. A couple of months ago I saw an ad for the Lily drone, I'm sure you saw it too. In the ad they launch and land BY HAND. If you value your fingers I wouldn't recommend this, it's really dangerous. It's a bit like gun control in a fictional state where you can buy guns without a permit. You can regulate and registrate all you want, but that won't stop loonies from doing stupid things.

Mikeb85 11y ago

The low probability of an incident is outweighed by the potential damage caused by an incident (large loss of life).

cs2818 11y ago

When will actual testing be conducted on this? My understanding is that bird strike tests are conducted against jet engines. Am I missing something that prevents us from conducting a few tests with these everyday "drones"? I have seen some experts speculating that apart from hitting the windscreen, a collision would not lead to complete catastrophe [1]. Regardless, I personally support these regulations, but would really like to see the outcome of a few empirical tests. [1] http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/drones/what-might-happen-if-airliner-hit-small-drone http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/drones/what-migh...

sathackr 11y ago

I don't know what the new proposed regulations are, but, for recreational use, I think the current set are fair and appropriate: Don't fly outside your unaided line of sight. Don't intentionally fly over people. Stay away from sensitive areas (Stadiums, etc...) Don't fly near an airport without contacting the airport. Stay under 400ft Register it and label it, so that if it does fall and hit someone on the head, they can find you and let our legal system handle the repercussions. Given the lack of inspection, that most of these rolled off an assembly line in China, have Lipo batteries that are prone to instantly shutting off if malfunctioning or overloaded(to prevent runaway thermal effect) meaning that these likely might fall out of the sky at any time, the restriction on flying within line of sight and not over people seems reasonable, along with the sensitive area restriction. I can't think of a major recreational use for flying over 400ft AGL, besides wanting to snap a picture of your neighborhood from the air. The most heavy handed one I can think of (and this one is enforced in DJI firmware) is the airport restriction. The official line is 'Don't fly within 5 miles of an airport without contacting the airport' -- There are enough airports that this covers a good bit of area, and, if a plane is below 500ft more than a mile or so from the airport, drones are probably not going to put it at any more risk. A DJI drone will not leave the ground if it detects it's within a couple miles of an airport's radius, and there is no way to override it, even with the airport's consent. The commercial regulations, as I understand them, are a bit more ridiculous. I haven't found the relevent text in the CFR, but I'm told that to fly a drone commercially(say, for a photographer to take pictures at a wedding) actually requires a full blown pilot's license, at least a 'sport pilots license'[1]. This seems a bit ridiculous for a photographer flying a drone 10ft above the ground. I hope some changes to this portion are coming. [1] http://uavcoach.com/drone-certification/#pilot http://uavcoach.com/drone-certification/#pilot

tibbon 11y ago
I agree, the airport restriction is heavy. It isn't really '5 miles of an airport' but just not 'in regulated airspace', which is frequently around 5 miles around an airport. Sadly, there's no provision for just flying under 100 feet.
- sathackr 11y ago

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rkangel 11y ago

The FAA isn't looking at the current level of risk - they're looking at the trajectory of that risk. The number of drones is rising rapidly and they're trying to get ahead of the problem before there's a serious incident. Can you imagine the headlines if they ignored the problem and even a single seater light aircraft was brought down? The results of a study by the "Academy of Model Aeronautics" is probably fairly predictable, likely to have some bias (in the same way that a study by the FAA is likely to have bias the other way). The FAA is aware that drones are not the same as birds. I remember recently reading that the FAA has commissioned a study into the effect of drone strikes and how the damage might be mitigated, but I now can't find the reference.

anentropic 11y ago

Better than they underestimate it