FAA Drone Regulations
Heads up!
The FAA released news today of revamped regulations to commercial drone use. Before today it was a lengthy process of actually having to be a licensed pilot in order to fly a drone weighing between .55 and 55 lbs. This was for commercial use only. Any person doing it for a hobby could fly it as long as you were in the proper airspace and your drone was registered. This is big news for smaller production companies and photographers wanting to legitimately add aerial photography and videography to their business model.
“We are part of a new era in aviation, and the potential for unmanned aircraft will make it safer and easier to do certain jobs, gather information, and deploy disaster relief,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx. “We look forward to working with the aviation community to support innovation, while maintaining our standards as the safest and most complex airspace in the world.”
You’re basically going to have to take a test once every 24 months to prove your airworthiness and that you don’t plan on using your drone for anything bad (background checks, etc…)
“You must be at least 16 years old to qualify for a remote pilot certificate, and you can obtain it in one of two ways:
- You may pass an initial aeronautical knowledge test at an FAA-approved knowledge testing center.
- If you already have a Part 61 pilot certificate, other than a student pilot certificate, you must have completed a flight review in the previous 24 months and you must take a small UAS online training course provided by the FAA.”
Although the new regulations don’t go into effect until the end of August, you can expect people to start trying to sell you just about anything in the way of training and test taking readiness software. Read more about the updates here.
