A drone pilot was fined $182K by the FAA
dpreview.com
dpreview.com
Also this gem: "These clips also revealed flight in hazardous conditions including heavy rain, fog, snow, and close proximity to buildings in downtown Philadelphia. There was also posted proof of the pilot intentionally losing radio signal, and control, of his drone." That goes way beyong "innocent experimentation with your new drone" and into "deliberately endangering people and property", especially if you've been warned about it twice already. Youtube money must've been pretty good to keep going.
The idiot's most viewed video has about 33k views. I'm not sure that's enough to cover $200k in fines.
This is more of a concern, and likely heavily violated:
"You must fly in Class G airspace. If you need to fly in Class B, C, D or E controlled airspace, you need to apply for airspace authorization."
https://www.dronepilotgroundschool.com/drone-license/
Most US cities would be Class B/C to the ground near a large airport, and Class D/E would be common for smaller cities.
It's a grey area I agree; but if you're filming your flights with the intention of putting the videos on YouTube and monetizing them, that's arguably commercial use.
That's incredible. Why does this specifically need a license? How is this going to be any different to just flying as a hobby?
I wish there were an exception for this. Likely the drone had programmed waypoints and was in an autonomous mode.
I remember hearing about attempts (back in the 80's?) to send a self-piloting model airplane across the Atlantic. I believe they finally succeeded? Fascinating to me. Utterly illegal I suppose.
But weather balloons get pass? I know amateurs launch balloons as well — perhaps there are restrictions however (like not near an airport, etc.).
Just some random thoughts.
EDIT, found a successful crossing in 2003, I thought there was an earlier one — perhaps only earlier failures.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spirit_of_Butts%27_Farm
https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/model-plane-f...
Those are licensed and regulated. And I am pretty sure that if FAA sends you a notice to stop flying your weather balloon, you stop flying it. It’s not like this “pilot” didn’t know what he was doing - he received written warnings and chose to ignore those.
This is not true, as for certain weights of payloads are regulated, all these 'near-space' hobbyist balloons do not need to notify the FAA about anything. It's common courtesy to let them know you are going to send something up to 120,000' but not required.
Any one of the following payload conditions trigger these restrictions:
- more than 4 lbs and more than 3 oz/in² on any side
- more than 6 lbs
- two or more packages totaling more than 12 lbs
- suspended from a rope or other device that requires more than 50 lbs to separate
So you’re right; small payloads don’t require any notice or special equipment.
> I wish there were an exception for this. Likely the drone had programmed waypoints and was in an autonomous mode.
It's probably not a safe way to fly, at least in an urban area near buildings, like the article said he was. GPS can go batty sometimes with signals blocked or reflected off buildings. I'm also not a drone pilot, but I'm a little skeptical that a drone flying by waypoints can compensate very well for weather conditions (such as gusty wind).
That drone is what, half a pound? It seems like the biggest risk is it hitting a pedestrian or cyclist (of which I did not see any), and could result in perhaps a single person needing to go the hospital.
Meanwhile that video shows a bridge full of a hundred vehicles with one ton+ curb weights, driving at one another, piloted by what are most likely bored inattentive drivers. Due to the vehicle weights, there's extreme danger to pedestrians (over a hundred thousand causalities per year in the US, deemed acceptable). Due to the large difference between weight classes of vehicles, there's a significant risk to the passengers of those vehicles. And it's kept in line mostly by voluntary adherence to visual boundaries and an expectation that drivers will hit the breaks if the vehicles they're driving at change course.
What happens when a half pound drone that's going 15+ kph hits an oncoming car windshield going many times that speed?
>hundred vehicles with one ton+ curb weights, driving at one another, piloted by what are most likely bored inattentive drivers.
what happens when you distract those drives with an aerial nuisance while they're trying to cross a bridge that offers no positive outcomes if the vehicle vector is changed?
Things don't have to be universally safe to point out a safety flaw with a specific variable.
Driving cars isn't safe, but doing something unsafe while compounded with distractions and possible bogeys is even more unsafe.
My intuition says the drone would bounce off, being made of light material. In the worst case, it would crack the windshield and the driver would stop.
> what happens when you distract those drives with an aerial nuisance
Many people look at birds while driving with little notable effect. It feels like the distracting-traffic argument is really just a couching of the real gripe, which is more like "weird new thing bad".
> Things don't have to be universally safe to point out a safety flaw with a specific variable
Sure, but we can compare relative safety. It's a bit odd to pick on a slightly-unsafe activity due to its proximity to a much unsafer activity. In general anything involving an urban landscape is going to have traffic/buildings/infrastructure adjacent. And so if we go by a standard of possibly affecting those things, there would end up being no permission for anything new.
I’m not excusing it, or saying there was no risk - but I will say that it’s not as risky as it seems at first glance.
Drones are held to a higher standard than any other vehicle I'm aware of. This ends up causing more harm than it prevents.
How many people take a car for a spin on a working airport runway because all that asphalt means it's a good place to have fun with the toy, especially without a driver's license or any idea of the rules of driving? Because plenty of people do it with drones. A better comparison would have been with laser pointers, another thing many people think is just a harmless toy.
> Of course for the latter [cars] we even have demonstrable harm, not only aggressive overregulation
This goes way beyond disingenuous. Do we have to wait for the harm to happen before considering regulation? There's a lot of truth in the popular wisdom that "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" so I'm curious what's a solid argument to suddenly demand being reactive rather than proactive especially when it comes to lives. I mean other than the one making my point above, that people want to play with "the toy".
We're going to have to: Less populated areas can't afford to maintain the infrastructure and more populated areas exceed roads in plains carrying individuals in cars ability to scale.
So it's perfectly possible to go back, given that people actually want it.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-22/a-car-fre...
I have a DJI Mavic Mini. If you're marginally competent, DJI makes it very clear that you are operating an aircraft and have rules to follow. In certain circumstances, you do not need to be Part 107 certified to operate this aircraft, nor do you need to register your aircraft. That said, you still must follow all related FAA regulations, like them or not. From the linked video from @nathancahill below, I see the Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) issue, night time flying (appeared to be started before the 30 minute twilight, and I doubt he had supplemental lighting which would have brought it over the weight limit for registration), and generally reckless operation. Height is to be 400 feet AGL (above ground level) unless near structures, which allows you to operate 400 feet above that (§14CFR107.51(b)).
The FAA warned him. He didn't pay attention. Maybe a $182K fine will get his attention.
Here in Canada, none of the drone rules and regulations apply to it, as it's too small to be considered a drone.
I have a drone ... addiction. I generally use my Mavic 2 for most of my flights, but when I want to fly somewhere I'm not allowed to fly, I switch to the Mavic Mini.
So yeah, all those rules the FAA has in the USA, we have similar rules in Canada and other countries. But they don't apply to the Mavic Mini.
I'm generally very pro-drone but this definitely makes it hard to defend the hobby against anti-drone arguments. Most of the things people complain about we can say "Well that's already illegal, and with RemoteID it will be much easier to report them and have consequences"... But these 249g drones with 30 mins battery life and 4k cameras don't have to follow a many of these laws, even though they cause a large proportion of the problems.
As regards FPV and even the very good remote viewing in the Mavic Mini, regular general aviation regulations essentially nullify either of those capabilities as being inadequate. §14CFR91.113(b) states, "vigilance shall be maintained by each person operating an aircraft so as to see and avoid other aircraft." That means in addition to looking forward, you need to regularly look above, below, left, right, and to the extent practicable behind.
On night time flight over a huge empty field, yup, I get it. The regulations make no sense for this.
I could begin a long discussion over the regulatory process in the US, but I won't. I will say however that it behooves drone operators to be aware of and to become involved in the regulatory process. Whether you like the process and the products of that process or not, it isn't going away. The regulations exist, the FAA appears at some level to actually be interested in educating rather than punishing, but they have the power to do what they think is necessary to maintain order and safety.
P.S. I believe the first shot of the video wouldn't fall under any regulation as it is not using airspace.
In my eyes, DJI application’s UI is as much (if not more) to blame here. It puts way, way too little emphasis on FAA regulation violations; a small corner alert when entering a controlled airspace is IMO inexcusable (“Fly with caution” and then it disappears). Generally speaking, the app knows everything necessary—location, country, time of day, lighting conditions—to show a big “Only proceed if you are indoors, outdoor flight is subject to $xxxxx fine” warning before flight takes place.
All models in the past five years come with a 120m max altitude set, and an absolute 500m limit.
There is a huge buffer area around airports [1]. If you’re seeing the “fly with caution” warning, you are not in a controlled zone. This is purely a matter of regulations.
I still think DJI UI is designed to enable fineable violations. The app at least knows it’s night and middle of a city; perhaps it can’t infer missing line of sight (questionable), but nighttime flight alone outdoors in a city is already illegal without a permit.
A company like DJI could easily afford to scrape and aggregate UAV regulations from different regions (there are numerous websites doing just that already) and integrate relevant checks in the app.
We live within 5 miles (as the crow flies) of a major international airport. Did they have an airspace authorization? I have absolutely no idea. Did they know they needed one? Probably not. Was there risk of any in-flight aircraft incidents? Not really, unless somebody was flying in the canopy of our local trees over a bunch of houses.
To be honest the rules are confusing. For example, some cities have an absolute no-fly zone in and around the city. The rules then say you are free to fly (with certain restrictions) outside of that zone. But in major metros, the restricted zone is usually so large that it merges with other no-drone-fly zones (like the ones near other airports, air force bases and the like) making the entire metro practically a no-fly zone. We're talking about areas that are maybe more than a 1000 sq mi. In the pockets you can fly in, you usually need pre-authorization and have restrictions.
At some point drones need to know where they can fly/can't fly (and simply report an error), automate the flight authorization and authorization envelope and just simply license pilots as well.
Considering somebody with no training at all can buy a drone out of the local Best Buy, and probably can't read a pilot's navigation chart to understand what an airspace is, and probably doesn't know the regulations at all (or that there are any really), it's probably time.
The problem with flying low near an airport isn’t that you might collide with a plane flying at 50 feet AGL, it’s that you’ll have an uncontrolled flyaway incident.
When the FAA warns you and you decide to YOLO it, I don't cry for you when you get what they promised you, but a few hundred feet over cities is nothing compared to flying beyond visual contact at altitudes where airplanes are commonly traveling.
You would think two letters from the FAA would get the point across. But you think it’s totalitarian not to give them just one more chance.
Here's the text of the 8th amendment of the US Constitution, part of the Bill of Rights.
"Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted."
As far as I am concerned, he is no better than someone who tries to blind pilots with a laser pointer (and there's precedent for that):
> Interfering with the operation of an aircraft is a crime punishable by a maximum of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
(Source: fbi.gov)
Kudos to the FAA for nipping that in the bud.
Receiving two warnings before getting a fine is extremely lenient.
For most people, that’s not payable in a lifetime.
But really, I don't care if it's extremely lenient by some standard. I care what policy will best dissuade antisocial behaviour with the minimal necessary fines imposed.
Clearly, in your view, a written warning from the FCC is obviously serious business, and if you got one you'd interpret it as such and immediately desist from whatever incited it. As this guy and the people disagreeing with you show, this attitude isn't universal.
Two warnings and then immediate financial execution just seems insane. If the the first and second letters had come with 1000 and 10000 dollar fines attached, almost everyone would have stopped by the first, let alone the second. There, no need to turn people into lifelong indentured servants.
(Of course, I imagine there's an incentive to maximize the amount of fines you collect, so that explains why it wouldn't happen that way.)
It is, though. He repeatedly operated his drone recklessly to such a degree that shows nothing but blatant disregard for air traffic and human lives. Every penny of this fine is well-deserved.
Or does it just matter that an authority said that's the fine that's warranted? If the FCC says it's 180k, 180k was just. If the FCC says 10k, 10k was just. If the FCC says a million, a million was just.
It is clear that he failed to understand the gravity of his recklessness prior to this fine, I am sure he understands now.
All things considered, his punishment was more or less a slap on the wrist:
> Interfering with the operation of an aircraft is a crime punishable by a maximum of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
(Source: fbi.gov)
Think of it another way, imagine if the cops kept pulling you over for speeding. The first time you just got a warning, but they told you next time it'd be a $500 fine. Then you get caught again and they said "Ok we'll give you ONE more warning, but if you keep doing this, it's a $500 fine". Then the third time you get caught, when they give you a $350 fine you can't be all surprised pikachu at them. This guy knew the stakes (and was repeatedly reminded of them, by the enforcing body, who told him they would enforce the law if he didn't stop) and he kept on breaking the law anyway. They need to send a clear message that this is NOT acceptable behavior. This is closer to driving on the runway at an active airport than it is to an everyday traffic violation.
In terms of the magnitude of the fine - he was putting people's lives in danger, which I think justifies the amount. You also have to keep in mind that drones are an expensive hobby, it's not uncommon for people to spend over $3k on drone equipment. Many popular drone pilots on instagram etc are incredibly wealthy and drive crazy sports cars and the like. They regularly fly $1000+ drones inches from water / through forests etc, and they can afford to lose a few of them.
Put another way - if the normal response to breaking these laws was 2 warnings and a $10k fine over 2 years of publicly posting widely watched videos of yourself breaking the law, it wouldn't be enough to stop a lot of these people.
I wasn't aware the purpose of government fines was bronze-age eye-for-an-eye-ism. But if it is, then I'd point out he didn't kill anyone.
In such a situation, it could easily cause a car accident, or crash through the window of a tall building, or worst-case scenario - which these laws are very much trying to prevent - it could end up in the engine of a plane coming in to land and endangering the hundreds of people on board.
If this drone was urgently delivering an organ for a transplant across the city, and flown by a professional operator with clearance from local airspace authorities, as well as multiple redundant systems to prevent catastrophic failure - then it's definitely worth the risk. But obviously that's not the case here, this was an amateur playing with a toy in order to make a youtube video. As such, it should only be allowed in the lowest risk environments - like big empty fields far away from people and airports.
And he has _intentionally_ lost contact with his drone:
> These clips also revealed flight in hazardous conditions including heavy rain, fog, snow, and close proximity to buildings in downtown Philadelphia. There was also posted proof of the pilot intentionally losing radio signal, and control, of his drone.
No. No. NO. A western government should not behave like Russia or China or other despotic states, EVER. It has to be fair to everyone, and "making an example out of someone" is definitely not fair.
(Source: fbi.gov)
What he did is comparable, imho.
In actual reality he didn't even attempt to interfere, not by choice nor by accident. There wasn't any other aircraft. Even supersonic aircraft can be seen early enough to land the drone.
He operated his drone recklessly to such a degree that shows nothing but blatant disregard for air traffic and human lives:
> "These clips also revealed flight in hazardous conditions including heavy rain, fog, snow, and close proximity to buildings in downtown Philadelphia. There was also posted proof of the pilot intentionally losing radio signal, and control, of his drone."
Every penny of his fine is well-deserved.
The FAA website is quite clear about what Philadelphia’s Class B airspace is about: "The primary purpose of a Class B airspace area is to reduce the potential for midair collisions in the airspace surrounding airports with high density airtraffic operations."