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 phon

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