Section 2209, tariffs, mobile TFRs, Part 108, LAANC reservations, and no-drone zones are not a safety system. They are reactions to the loss of public trust.
Dispatch 2 of 4
The viability of the Western drone ecosystem is in peril in a way it has not been since the FAA policy clarification of February 2007. This is not only about selfie pilots and Best Buy flyers whose plight is tethered to a DJI ban. Coupled with the other regulations and policy constitute real threats that can turn what is left of the domestic industry and ecosystem into a hellscape.
Airspace is eroding under Section 2209, mobile temporary flight restrictions, and the hurdles and hoops in Part 108. The small businessperson is in danger of an even smaller piece of the pie. The byproduct will be the death of a viable dual-use airspace: every facility manager, school, daycare, clinic — and their dog — will buck for a personal no-drone zone. Add the narcissist political and appointee class arguing for personal TFRs and you might not have much sky left . Couple that nuttiness with a patchwork of passive LAANC reservations, millions of deliveries a day, and the however many thousands of advanced air mobility flights necessary to hit $10 per passenger-mile, and the droner will have yielded the right of way. Away.
The regulatory low-hanging fruit is to deny the end-user airspace, chill the First Amendment, and lock law-abiding small business people out of a public-trust resource.
The FAA arbitrarily took livelihoods in early 2007. Before that, RCAPA tried to work with the agency on safe and immediately implementable solutions. It became apparent pretty early that RC hobbyists and small business drone folks were going to get poked. Beyond the safety of the National Airspace System — the trope managers have brayed about since before NextGen — unauthorized flights in TFRs and over military installations invalidate the slogan. Public and private money and person-hours have produced a lackluster return on the regulatory and policy schemes. There are supposedly some good folks at the agency. However, they are like hens’ teeth. The New Jersey punishment duty office is the outlier.
Part 108 is sold as hope. Any poor bastard thinking they will cash in on a BVLOS rush might want to find a local support meeting. The only operators who will be able to plausibly self-certify have deep pockets, kennels of attorneys, lobbyists, and can wait out any two-drones-one-crane NTSB reports.
Legacy OEMs fund “advocacy” groups, lobbyists, carpetbaggers, standards committees, carnival barkers, grifters, and professional chair-warmers spend heavily on campaign contributions and keep kennels of lobbyists to pre-sell the $800 toilet seat. The helpers can get you sUAS bins built around existing product, private test sites, commercial training contracts, certification, and cut and paste waiver hand-holding.
The industry is cyclical. VC visionaries, selfie pilots, and Best Buy flyers bust out on average of a two-year cycle. That churn is how institutional failure keeps happening. The shiftless, disingenuous, and gutless amongst the regulators, advocates, and experts are, by and large, out for themselves. Evidence: the abhorrently slow pace at which rules are doled out — a reliable way to kick any civilization in the shins. The law-abiding end-user endures and tries to work harder to overcome the dysfunction and only eke out a meager living from an ever-shrinking envelope.
It is an undeniable fact that Western countries have lost sovereignty of their airspace, physically or in the very least, the public perception. Much reorganization at the FAA, NASA too, but there is still more accountability needed at the civil aviation authorities. The electronic paper trail of shiftlessness exists.