FAA Proposes Nearly $2M Fine Against Drone Operator | Hacker News Reader

FAA Proposes Nearly $2M Fine Against Drone Operator

abcnews.go.com

87 pointsanigbrowl76 comments

In general it's fantastic that the FAA is finally loosening up on drone regulation. Overall the technology has huge potential and is pretty safe to operate in most places if done responsibly.

Class B airspace is not one of those places. FOD can very easily take down an aircraft. These guys are going to get the book thrown at them, and they deserve it. It's very much in our best interest as a tech community to weed out people who act with such disregard. If there's an appearance that we aren't responsible enough for this, there will be a backlash and we will have a much, much shorter leash.

It's probably going to be a tension that we see repeated as we explore drone tech, since Class B airspace is often located near large cities that would be good target markets for drone-based businesses.

Even if the FAA grants the low-altitude airspace to drone traffic there will still be problems. The larger, faster high-altitude drone corridors with the most dangerous traffic would be placed the closest to other air traffic. Having better guidance, transponders, and collision avoidance is a start, but nowhere near sufficient. They still won't be responding to ATC guidance and commands. I imagine we'll probably see a tiered exclusion zone around airports for this reason.

I've seen several news stories here in BC and other places on the west coast about rescue and fire fighting planes which were grounded due to unmanned drones in their airspace. One idiot hobbyist with no regard for anyone else can threaten thousands of acres of forest and countless human lives.

Shut these people down, bring the hammer down on people being idiots, and let the responsible people keep going.

I mean, this isn't even someone toying around with a quad and not realizing there was serious air traffic in the area. They repeatedly ignored the FAA telling them to knock it off with the drones around jumbo jets.

What exactly did they think would happen?

Frankly, I think the disparity between the cost of drones and the amount of damage that they can do in irresponsible or unskilled hands has put us in an untenable situation. We need to quickly develop technological countermeasures against unlawful drone use, or we can expect to see a draconian law enforcement response, just as we have seen in another similar arena: hacking.

Here's the thing - this problem will only become more common. A side effect of scientific and technological progress is that individuals wield ever increasing amounts of destructive power.

Technological countermeasures will only lead to an arms race, in which the defender is always at a disadvantage.

In the very near future, how are we supposed to defend against a high-school kid who accidentally created a deadly pathogen? How about a deliberate bioattack? We really need to figure this out, and sooner rather than later.

Yeah, from what I hear Class Bravo airspace is one of those areas that you can flying toward in a Cessna 172, ask to enter, and be pretty much told "no thanks, not right now". (N.B. Not a pilot, you're all safe).

You can definitely fly in class B in a Cessna. There have been articles on AOPA about this, e.g.:

http://flighttraining.aopa.org/magazine/2013/June/feature-li...

Barry Schiff even wrote an article about flying into LAX in a 172:

http://www.aopa.org/News-and-Video/All-News/2014/July/Pilot/...

I sometimes fly from YYJ (class C) and they're quite adept at fitting the Cessnas in between the 737s and dash-8s. There's no low-level class B here in Canada (only above 12500ft), but the Vancouver class C terminal zone is probably equivalent to the class B around SFO.

Interesting, thanks for the links.

Not really, a licensed private pilot can fly into class bravo airspace in something like a 172. Happens all the time and the NYC controllers are actually quite good with this. Flew with a pilot friend and ATC took him right over Manhattan and JFK in a little Cessna. However if you act like one of these drones and fly in with no radio comms and no transponder, that's when they scramble the fighter jets.

This is true, but ATC can also deny your request to enter Bravo.

This is correct. To enter Class Bravo airspace, one must have clearance from Air Traffic Control. Pilots are free to request clearance through Class Bravo, but it's not always granted. For example, flying a Cessna 172 out of San Carlos Airport in the San Francisco Bay Area, it's very convenient to travel through the nearby Bravo airspace of San Francisco airport. Sometimes it's granted, other times we have to go around.

Furthermore, having obtained a Bravo clearance, you must pay close attention to and promptly obey any instructions from ATC (which can be of the form "turn left 10 degrees immediately for traffic avoidance"). By contrast, controllers have no means to track drones or communicate with their pilots.

The issue I see from looking at the photos on the site is that they were flying in airspace that's frequently occupied by 'real' air traffic and were blatantly violating the rules about where/when you can fly these things. The FAA told them to stop and they kept going anyway. Those rules aren't just bureaucratic fluff, but are there because there are real people flying real airplanes/helicopters in those areas.

I'm all for the whole "let's just ignore the rules and be disruptive" attitude that some new companies take these days, but you can't just go flying these things into airspace that's been designated for legit air traffic and expect to not get the book thrown at you. Heck they were doing this over NYC, they're lucky the Feds didn't decide to go all ballistic with the "we're going to treat you like a terrorist" stuff.

I'm all for the whole "let's just ignore the rules and be disruptive" attitude that some new companies take these days, but you can't just go driving these things into roads that've been designated for legit taxi traffic and expect to not get the book thrown at you. Heck they were doing this in NYC.

Until someone disrupts air traffic control, I'm afraid that airspace is stuck with the status quo.

Care to explain how you go about "disrupting" air-traffic control?

People can easily route air traffic from their smartphones like the air traffic controller game. You have a bunch of people directing traffic in the game, and you find the most commonly agreed upon flight path and use that to direct the pilots! It's like how Duolingo crowd sources language translations. It's so obvious!

This is both genius and horrifying.

I was being facetious but now that I think about it, it does seem fairly inevitable that one day air-traffic control will be consider to have too low a margin for error to entrust to human operators.

Uber leverages cars that are already on the road driven by licensed drivers.

That's just not a similar comparison. Would you be jumping to Uber's defense if the drivers just started ignoring one way street rules, or perhaps if they just blatantly used bike lanes? That would be a similar situation.

Uber driving people around will not endanger lives. Drones in class B airspace will.

What's the danger from drones? How do our current aircraft handle birds?

Birds aren't made of plastic and metal and lithium-polymer.

The birds are slaughtered.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/13/nyregion/13geese.html

That sounds more like a danger to the drone than a danger to the plane.

Occasionally, they crash and kill people: http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2012/may/17/deadly-...

Here's a report from the NTSB about a helicopter flying at normal speed and altitude which hit a red-tailed hawk and resulted in the deaths of 8 people.. so there's that..

http://www.ntsb.gov/_layouts/ntsb.aviation/brief.aspx?ev_id=...

People keep bring that up, but they actually take great pains to keep birds away from places that airplanes fly, because of the danger. For instance they use falcons to ward off bird packs from airports. Just one of the things they do. But birds are still a danger, we just can't control them.

But this? This is controlled by a human. So what is the excuse? Personal freedom? That's not going to cut it with the public.

Birdstrikes are incredibly dangerous.[1] Flying drones into class b airspace and ignoring FAA requests to cease should be a criminal matter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Airways_Flight_1549

Sometimes well, sometimes not. Bird strikes are relatively rare, but do happen. I've had two. One tiny guy on the wind screen on landing at about 150mph which caused no damage and one on the nacelle of a jet engine at around 270mph that did cause structural damage. I also own a little DJI phantom "drone" and have no doubt that it could snuff out a turbine engine if it was ingested or cause significant structural damage. Unfortunately the FAA can't go after birds with fines for busting class B airspace, but they can and should nail drone operators.

The little copters are really awesome to play with but the FAA needs to start upping the enforcement. You need to be licensed to talk on a ham radio, you should be licensed to fly a drone. Not a full on pilots license, but written tests on airspace every year or two. It would be nice if future drones continuously transmitted the operators credentials on a publicly available frequency.

A better analogy would be riding your bicycle on array, and not necessarily with traffic.

I agree. If they are operating unsafely and actually end up causing an incident that's going to cost a lot more than 2M

I suppose that from a practical perspective they are lucky that the feds didn't abuse their power by treating air traffic violators as if they were deliberately attempting mass murder, but it's a bit disturbing how plausible that scenario is.

Now that you mention it... there's pretty much no point in the TSA's involvement in passenger-side airport security when airplanes are comparatively much more easily attacked from the outside. If I was a terrorist, I know which method I'd choose.

Wouldn't that be detonating the bomb on the airport instead? This whole security theater only plays into terrorists' hands. Yes, it may be more difficult to board a plane with explosives nowadays, but on the other hand we have hundreds of people stuck in a line trying to pass through security one-by-one, dropping potential liquid explosives into a single bin!

Drones are the new UFO.

If a pilot or passenger sees a bird, balloon, or odd reflection these days, it's a "drone". Be skeptical about the recent uptick in fear mongering about the number of drone sightings in the vicinity of airports and airplanes.

As someone who has spent a fair amount of time in small, four-seater airplanes and also owns a popular quadcopter model, I always feel compelled to add some color to these threads about drones.

When I'm flying my quadcopter, it's extremely difficult to spot once I've lost continuous sight of it. Look away for a second, and you're staring at an empty sky. Even when it's just a couple hundred feet away and you know exactly where to look, the thing is nearly invisible in the air.

Sitting in the passenger seat of a Cirrus or Cessna, I've always been surprised by how difficult it is to spot nearby aircraft. Whole planes, orders of magnitude larger than a consumer drone, are much harder to spot than you'd expect. Even when ATC alerts us where the traffic is, you rarely pick it up visually until much later than you'd anticipate.

Maybe more importantly, many modern drones have geofencing that prevents them from flying into the restricted airspace around airports.

Combining my experience in both situations with the geofencing around restricted airspace, I find it incredibly hard to believe that folks are honestly spotting consumer quadcopters from airplanes in this quantity. It's just not credible at all if you've spent much time around either or both hobbies.

Well think again, as a commercial pilot with 16 years of experience I can tell you that sometimes you can even see what type of bird you crossed. And it has to be quite close to be a problem to you, so pilots are reporting drones that could be ingested in to the engine and create a fire in short final. Not all reports are accurate, that's true. But most of us don't go reporting ufos these days...

With all due respect to your experience, digging into the details of the FAA's data on these supposed drone encounters is telling: http://motherboard.vice.com/read/drones-are-the-new-ufos

For example, this is a report from this year that the FAA categorized as a drone encounter here in my hometown of Atlanta:

> A VFR aircraft receiving ATC service reported passing an object approx 500ft below him at 095. The pilot described the object as round circular, red in color, and reported it could have been a drone or a balloon. A80 ATC did not observe any targets on radar in the vicinity of N7745.

A drone or a balloon? Might as well just chalk it up to swamp gas at that point.

Having been in aircraft looking out and having watched from the ground as my own quadcopter disappeared into the sky significantly closer than 500ft away, I find it extremely challenging to see most reports like that as credible. Yet, the FAA has no qualms with aggregating this junk data into a scary story to sway public opinion. Disappointing.

I'm curious. Have you personally, definitively witnessed a consumer drone in restricted airspace during approach?

Well fair enough, I was talking about commercial pilots reports in final approach or take off. I guess that VFR flights are going to be less precise, also VFR flights are more probable to flight themselves in to a zone where drones can be flown legally. They are going to be sharing airspace much more than drones and airliners.

I haven't seen a drone yet, I do have like 12 or so laser reports under my belt. They are annoying (mostly kids being "funny") but not that dangerous, it's impossible for a person to track perfectly the cockpit at the speed and distance we are traveling for them, so you only get to see a short red or green flash and the laser beam moving around.

I eventually expect to have some air-miss with drones from dumb plane spotters or a guy that's taking some video from above without realizing that he is in a final approach zone. Not a big worry right now for me, my friends or other pilots I fly with.

But take into account that just a drone strike in an engine can cost more than 1 million dollars in repairs, or up to 5 or 6 of an entire engine depending on the damage. Plus the losses and delays caused by the plane being grounded for some days. Also although much more unprovable, it can lead to a crash or at least a runway excursion while landing, or total hull loss once stopped on the ground and with passengers evacuated, due to an unextinguished engine fire.

Don't get me wrong. I don't in any way condone people flying drones in restricted airspace. There are so many other (safe) places to fly that it makes no sense to endanger people and/or property by flying in dangerous areas.

I don't even question that these encounters are happening occasionally, because there are always reckless morons out there to ruin things like this for everyone, but I do question the credibility of this recent hysteria around drones.

Speaking of the laser pointers, I got zapped in the eye with a green laser pointer at night once while sitting in the passenger seat. I happened to be leaning over and looking down at the ground right when they were targeting us. The intensity was much greater than I would have expected a few thousand feet up. It wasn't quite blinding, but super disorienting for a few seconds. Hard to believe that anyone would think it's okay to do that.

Speaking as a pilot who flies within the NY Class B airspace at low altitude from time to time...

Good

Nothing to see here, the FAA is doing exactly what it ought to.

No doubt the company did stupid shit, but the FAA can't actually fine someone for that much money (http://1.usa.gov/1QXnT3U) or try to ban youtube videos (http://bit.ly/1Bzvaki). The FAA should really just focus on meeting their deadlines on figuring out sensible legislation (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2492506,00.asp)

The first link does say "before 2003"

True. I wonder if that's changed. Either way, they could still go through DOJ to sue for more (https://twitter.com/dronelaws/status/651474756554858496)

Point being, this will just dissuade people from trying anything new in the space, when sensible legislation should be setup to stop people from trying "stupid" things in this space. The existence of sensible legislation seems to be lost in this media fervor.

The second sentence goes on to say that the fees they can charge are higher for events happening after that date.

I wonder if those penalties are per-infraction, though.

It also says, "small businesses". I wonder what that means vs... non-small-businesses.

>For civil penalties in excess of the dollar limitation on FAA’s assessment authority (for other than hazardous materials violations), the FAA has authority to compromise a penalty. This type of action is initiated when the FAA sends a civil penalty letter to an entity. The letter advises that the FAA believes the entity has violated a statute or regulation. The letter also states that the FAA is willing to accept a penalty of a specified amount in resolution of the matter.

If I understand the process correctly, this is essentially a settlement offer. The FAA is suggesting that the company pay $1.9 million for its misdeeds; if the FAA and SkyPan can't come up with a compromise, it gets handed over to the US attorney's office.

Though I don't assert they're analogous danger risks, I wonder if eventually unsanctioned drone operations in certain airspace will carry with it charges akin to those who shine lasers at pilots in airplanes.

They should. If anything they're more dangerous.

Imagine driving your car at 150mph (or higher) and having a bystander throw one of these drones into your windshield.

For the people here who say that the drones can't take down an airliner or a small Cessna how many lives are you willing to bet on it? The live of two people typical of a Cessna 172, the lives of a few hundred passengers in a Boeing 777? What we are forgetting is the human factors here too. It is not just a collision that might damage an engine, a wing, or a tail section. It is also the distraction the pilot now has to deal with very close to the ground. Now instead of paying attention to the landing and other aircraft the pilot has to figure out what was that noise that just collided with it. Especially under instrument meteorological conditions. In fact, FAA has regulations for airlines to have a sterile cockpit (100% concentration on the landing and no outside distractions) due to accidents that have happened and loss of life while pilots were distracted with other things even higher than the 400 ft.

edit: In summary/TL;DR SkyPan was explicitly allowed to operate a 55lb drone commercially if they stayed at an altitude less than 400ft, the drone would fly home after a lost connection for safety, they were more than 500ft from people, and were 5 nautical miles from an airport UNLESS THEY HAD WRITTEN CONSENT from air traffic control authority.

The FAA has only issued 333a exeptions for commercial drone use to ~399 firms, one of which is SkyPan. Exemptions are case by case. They give these FAQs[1] on their site breaking down what that permit is.

Here are some excerpts from the SKYPAN exemption. These are issued as letters if you see the link[2] below and are evaluated on the case by case basis, following are relevant intersting excerpts specific to skypan[3]:

ESTABLISHED PRECEDENCE

====================================

> FAA found that the enhanced safety achieved using an unmanned aircraft (UA) with the specifica tions described by the petition er and carrying no passengers or crew, rather than a manned aircraft of signi ficantly greater proporti ons, carrying crew in addition to flammable fuel, gi ves the FAA good cause to find th at the UAS operation enabled by this exemption is in the public interest.

TYPE OF VEHICLE

====================================

This is the operating drone Specs:

> Operations authorized by this grant of ex emption are limited to the Align T Rex 700E F3C when weighing less than 55 pounds in cluding payload.

GENERAL RULES (speed, altitude, oversite)

====================================

> may not be operated at a speed exceeding 87 knots (100 miles per hour).

> The UA must be operated at an altitude of no more than 400 feet above ground level

> All operations must utilize a visual observer (VO). The UA must be operated within the visual line of sight (VLOS) of the PI C and VO at all times. [I think PIC is person in control]

OPERATING AROUND AIRPORTS (SkyPan)

====================================

The UA may not operate within 5 nautical mile s of an airport reference point (ARP) as denoted in the current FAA Airport/Facil ity Directory (AFD) or for airports not denoted with an ARP, the center of the ai rport symbol as denoted on the current FAA- published aeronautical chart, unless a lett er of agreement with that airport’s management is obtained or otherwise permitted by a COA issued to the exemption holder.

OPERATIONS AROUND CITIES (SkyPan)

====================================

All Flight operations must be conducted at least 500 feet from all nonparticipating persons, vessels, vehicles, and structures unless: a. Barriers or structures are present that sufficiently pr otect nonparticipating persons from the UA and/or debris in the event of an accident. The operator must ensure that nonparticipating persons remain under such protection. If a situation arises where nonparticipating persons leave such protection and are within 500 feet of the UA, flight operations must cease immediately in a manner ensuring the safety of nonparticipating persons; and b. The owner/controller of any vessels, vehicles or struct ures has granted permission for operating closer to those objects and the PIC has made a safety assessment of the risk of operating closer to those objects and determined that it does not present an undue hazard.

SOURCES

======================================

[0]https://www.faa.gov/uas/legislative_programs/section_333/333...

[1]https://www.faa.gov/uas/legislative_programs/section_333/333...

[2]https://www.faa.gov/uas/legislative_programs/section_333/333...

[3]In the letter the decision is based on other proposals, so some of these rules are possibly boilerplate. However, as an exemption, when I say "specific", I mean these are grants, so these are rules and allocations the entity (skypan here) must follow, not neccessarily applicable to other providers.

I just hope we don't all end up in that Audi commercial stuck in an office building, heh.

But seriously, I'm glad to see the FAA is paying attention to drones.

Wait, all the way to the ground within five miles of an airport? A drone hovering four feet above your driveway is illegal in those areas?

Yeah. No drones/RC aircraft/large kites/balloons within 5 miles of a major airport without contacting Air Traffic Control

Is somebody going to come after you for the drone toy you got at Target for $30, flying 5 feet off the ground? Probably not -- The FAA doesn't regulate throwing basketballs in the air either. Is it illegal? Probably! I wonder what ATC would say if you asked permission to fly your drone under 25 feet in your yard ;)

Fines? They should be held criminally liable if they were told repeatedly that their drone activity was endangering lives!

How did they know the drones belonged to SkyPan?

"We have the safest airspace in the world, and everyone who uses it must understand and observe our comprehensive set of rules and regulations."

tl;dr: We're safe because our rules are convoluted and scare people away.

Scare people away from doing what?

I'm pretty happy that there's a lot of rules preventing me and plummeting to my death when I fly on an airplane.

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