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> When you fly a drone, you still constitute a danger to other aircraft and the people in it, or people on the ground. Why should you be subject to fewer rules, just because you are not aboard the aircraft, and thus not at risk?

Because a drone is a lot smaller and thus constitutes a heavily reduced risk.

> Imagine remote controlled cars on the road. Should we allow some drunk kids without license on their computer at home to control cars on the road (and endanger everyone else), just because they are not in danger? Of course not.

So, to borrow your imagery here: A bicycle is a lot less risky to traffic and people than a car is and thus you are allow to drive it without a license and punishments for violations are in general lower than for cars.

Keep in mind a flock of Canada geese can force down airliners. Can the impact break a windshield? Can it deform a prop? Maybe get stuck in the air intake? Will it cause pilot to change course unnecessarily?

In my home country every bird/plane collision is a safety incident that needs paperwork with the authorities, no matter how insignificant. Birds are a problem, and so are drones.

Existing European regulation is clear on drone operations: it is just as illegal to put in a restricted airspace without permission as any other man created flying object. You can go to jail over simply violating the airspace, even if no danger was even remotely possible.

You can ride a bike without a license but you still have to follow the rules of the road. Same for a drone. You don't need a license but you have to follow the rules of the air.

Yup, and there are reasonable rules for drones (such as an FAA regulated flight ceiling of 400ft and you can't fly within 5 miles of an airport* ). Following those rules is fairly simple, and at least DJI's app makes an attempt to let you know when something is amiss.

Follow those rules and you're riding the bike path, not mixing in with major air traffic. Hence why flying a drone is nothing like flying an airplane.

* for certain definitions of airport

IMO the opposite is happening. The FAA regulates navigation of the air which includes drones and has fairly simple rules. The problem is when cities and towns try to get in on the action and (illegally) attempt to ban the use of drones because residents don't like them. This creates a number of problems for the FAA because the whole point of having an FAA is to have a central authority that has monopoly control over navigation of the air, rather than a fragmented system where you need permission from multiple overlapping jurisdictions. If you are flying a plane, you do not need permission of whatever city/state/small town you are flying over, it's enough to get the FAA's permission. But now cities are fining people for flying drones in FAA approved airspace and heights, and this creates all the pain for the individual drone user.

I don't agree. A more apropos analogy to flight, based on the article, is if you do all your full scale due diligence, including following all rules set by the FAA, and then you get fined because buried in a small town's ordinance is a law saying you're not allowed to fly over a certain farming field, the result of that field's resident complaining that your small plane was spying and invading their privacy.

Drones present a much lower risk profile, so it is not surprising that drone operators are subject to fewer rules.

> Having said that, there are tools that facilitate planning a flight (in a safe and lawful manner), and having something similar for drones would obviously be great.

That... is exactly the subject matter of the article. The FAA, the government agency governing airspace in the USA, has an app that purportedly tells the drone operator when it is or isn't OK to fly. The problem is that the operator cannot rely on it, because of local laws which may prohibit drone flight.

The article's author was an AMA member, which means he has insurance. He is obviously the kind of consumer drone operator you want more of, he has downloaded the FAA's app and is trying his best to make sure he flies legally. The drone he's flying is a tiny 300g, almost "toy" grade drone from parrot.

It should not be this difficult to fly a drone legally.

> That... is exactly the subject matter of the article.

That's why I brought it up. My point is that it piloting drones should be carefully regulated, and violations harshly punished, but it should not be unnecessarily difficult to fly legally (as it lamentably appears to be).

Except for the fact they both fly I don't see the similarities between PPL rated pilots and recreational drone flight at all. Recreational drone pilots do not fly in what most people consider controlled air traffic. A drone flight plan shouldn't take more than 15 minutes: check Skyvector for TFRs and NOTAMs, check Airmap for restricted airspace, send a LAANC to the local ATC, check local weather, and finally check the flight area for obstructions. That is literally it. Most recreational drones don't have the range to go out of sight.

If anything if we are using cars as a metaphor. Drones are like dirtbikes. They aren't allowed on public roads. But can be freely driven on private property and BLM territories.

check Skyvector for TFRs and NOTAMs, check Airmap for restricted airspace, send a LAANC to the local ATC, check local weather, and finally check the flight area for obstructions. That is literally it.

That sure is a lot of military-sounding acronyms which I haven't the slightest idea what they stand for to end that with, "that's literally it".

If I was to guess, you have experience in piloting airplanes, and flying a drone would be in comparison, a lot simpler, but it doesn't sound simple.

I’ve done a few thousand flights in small airplanes and have spent an hour on flight planning maybe handful of times, and those were 8 hour routes in an airplane without GPS. 99% of times flight planning do not and should not take an hour.

Fair enough. I've mostly flown cross country to new destinations out of the Bay area and south, and with SFO, SJC, OAK, LAX etc. around you do want to plan your route reasonably well. And yes, the GPS can warn you when you're about to fly into some airspace, but I prefer to plan it as if I didn't have a GPS.

But you're right, most pilots on most flights probably do not take an hour to flight plan - but that's often because they've done so before.