Wednesday, May 13, 2015

As a pilot, I’m not keen on sharing the skies with drones -Barrie Rokeach; Drones Boom Raises New Question: Who Owns Your Airspace?

By Barrie Rokeach
May 13, 2015


A few months ago, I was a passenger on a commercial flight departing John Wayne Airport in Orange County. At about 700 feet I noticed a drone about 1,000 feet away from our aircraft. As a general aviation pilot, I shuddered to think about what would have happened if we had made contact, or the potential catastrophe if I had been flying one of the single-engine airplanes I’ve piloted for over 40 years.

This scenario is becoming ever more likely as more drones take to the air. Even the lighter drones now intruding into the airspace have sufficient mass to bring down a small aircraft, and could possibly wreak havoc on a commercial airliner.

So I read with interest Chronicle business columnist Thomas Lee’s recent column about a Santa Cruz conference on the future of drones (“FAA official odd man out at drab site for drone talks,” May 5). In his column, Lee complained about the “slow rollout of drones in the United States,” and faulted the FAA for not having “some sort of regular relationship with the tech industry.” While many people criticize the agency for moving like molasses, that is also one of its inherent strengths: making sure any innovation is proven before introducing it into an intricate and potentially perilous environment.

Lee is echoing a drumbeat from Washington. Congress, at the behest of the drone industry, has been pushing the FAA to integrate these pilotless vehicles into a crowded airspace too quickly for comfort.

I have logged thousands of hours flying around the Bay Area, which has a dozen or more airspaces. Such airspaces are complex, and that is exactly what the tech industry might not appreciate. A pilot is licensed only after mastering the intricacies of the modern airspace, and learning to use the instruments required by the FAA to fly safely.

Student pilots must complete a minimum of 40 hours of flight training to be certified. The average student, however, requires much longer to master all that goes into flying an airplane, especially in the Bay Area. The pilot has to keep the aircraft aloft while navigating precisely and keeping track of both altitude and longitudinal position, consulting maps or an electronic tablet, communicating with controllers (a particularly steep learning curve), and maintaining situational awareness and separation from other aircraft, all while constantly scanning an array of a dozen or more critical instruments. Texting while driving is a piece of cake compared with piloting a plane.

And that is just the operational aspects of flying. The Airman’s Information Manual is 1,333 pages long. The Pilot’s Operating Handbook, required for each aircraft type, can be several hundred pages long. Aviation maps contain hundreds of symbols depicting airspace, topographic, airport, radio, navigation and geographic information. The key to those symbols, the Aeronautical Chart User’s Guide, is 85 pages. Much of this information needs to be available at immediate recall.

That’s only the beginning: flying at night, cross-country, over water, in mountainous terrain, high altitude, bad weather or in convoluted airspaces all have their own requirements and limitations. More sophisticated aircraft add additional burdens.

In short, flying is a demanding activity, one still requiring human presence and instinct. When you rely too much on technology, you get the Asiana disaster at SFO. When you retain the human factor, you get Sully Sullenberg landing safely in the Hudson River. This argues for the FAA taking its time to institute thorough training for drone operators, establish carefully designed regulations for where and how drones can be operated, and ascertain the requisite drone instrumentation.

Barrie Rokeach, a private pilot and professional photographer, lives in Berkeley.

Original article can be found here:   http://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion





Drones Boom Raises New Question: Who Owns Your Airspace?  

17 states have passed laws to restrict use of craft, but where does private property begin?

The Wall Street Journal 
By Jack Nicas
May 13, 2015 12:43 p.m. ET


Communities across the country are grappling with a surge in drone use that’s raising safety and privacy concerns—and thorny legal questions—about a slice of sky officials have largely disregarded.

State and local police say complaints are soaring about drones flying above homes, crowds and crime scenes. At least 17 states, meanwhile, have passed laws to restrict how law enforcement and private citizens use the devices—preemptive policies that many drone users say are heavy-handed. And despite federal regulators’ stance that they alone regulate U.S. skies, some cities and towns are banning the devices, from St. Bonifacius, Minn. (pop. 2,283), to Austin, Texas, which effectively barred them at the South by Southwest technology-and-music festival in March.

“It’s a game changer,” said Richard Beary, president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, who complains that local law enforcement lacks the means or legal authority to do much about the emerging drone challenge. “We’ve never been responsible for airspace before. We understand the ground game; now all of a sudden you want state and local to regulate airspace?”

Indeed, few have paid much attention to the airspace within a few hundred feet above the ground. Since 1930, planes have been largely restricted from flying below 500 feet, leaving lower altitudes mostly to birds, kites, model planes and, in some cases, helicopters.

In recent years, technology advances have made remote-controlled aircraft cheaper, more powerful and easier to fly, and now tens of thousands of the devices are cluttering that band of sky. Use is expected to soar further next year, when proposed federal rules for commercial drone flights are likely to be completed.

Those commercial rules don’t address private use by individuals, where some of the most vexing issues lie, such as how to prevent people from using drones to spy into neighbors’ windows, or flying them into manned aircraft. Those issues are falling into a regulatory no-man’s land.

The Federal Aviation Administration restricts private drones from flying near airports and manned aircraft, but says a 2012 federal law limits it from regulating most other aspects of their use. The agency also says that state and local authorities can’t regulate drone flights because it is the sole regulator of the airspace.

Local officials are acting anyway. In addition to the 17 states that have passed drone laws, at least 29 others are considering new legislation. The result is a patchwork: Texas, North Carolina and Idaho restrict drone users from filming some bystanders without permission, while Illinois bans drones from interfering with hunters.

Some cities and towns are barring drones outright, particularly ahead of big events. Augusta-Richmond County in Georgia banned the devices during the Masters golf tournament there last month. New York City Council members are considering a ban on virtually any drone flight over the city. And the manager of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge has asked lawmakers to restrict private drones after one crashed on the bridge.

Northampton, Mass., has challenged the FAA with a resolution declaring that local landowners control the 500 feet above their property. The town cites a 1946 Supreme Court ruling, in a case involving North Carolina chicken farmers angry about flights overhead, that landowners have “exclusive control over the immediate reaches” above their land.

Many attorneys have cited that 1946 case as a looming dilemma for regulators and the drone industry. They say it poses tough legal questions, such as where does “navigable airspace” begin and the control of property owners end?

“We weren’t forced to answer these questions and we absolutely will be now,” said John Villasenor, a public-policy professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. “And I’m quite sure that we collectively don’t have the answers yet.”

The FAA says the advent of drones has extended “navigable airspace”—and thus the FAA’s authority—down to the ground. As long as private drones don’t endanger people, the agency says, they can legally hover just above private property in the U.S. The agency added that many states and cities have “noise and nuisance” laws they can use to prosecute drone users who fly over private property.

Paul Voss, an engineering professor at Smith College in Northampton, lobbied for the town council’s resolution on drones. The FAA’s stance effectively means “all public airspace down to the ground is considered a public highway for unmanned aircraft, and any private investigator or paparazzi can fly there,” he said. “It’s the commercialization of everywhere. Everywhere is now open for commercial airspace and there’s no notion of private property anymore except for the grass itself.”

Police are also struggling with drones, said Mr. Beary, head of the 23,000-member police-chief association. Authorities have tested radar, audio sensors and net guns to protect public events like Major League Baseball games and the Boston Marathon from dangerous drone use, but no proven solution exists, Mr. Beary said.

“Unfortunately law enforcement doesn’t have much to go on,” he said. “The regulations don’t exist, and quite frankly the [privacy] laws on the books were designed for someone looking in your window, not someone flying a drone 50 feet above your backyard.”

Federal guidance only complicates the job, he said. The FAA has asked local police to help it enforce its drone rules, while also warning authorities they should tread lightly; the devices are protected under federal law because they are legally considered aircraft, like a passenger jet.

“There are significant, significant penalties about interference and destruction of civil aircraft,” FAA attorney Charles Raley told law-enforcement officials at a symposium this year. “Before you charge back and say, ‘We’re…shotgunning these things out of the sky,’ talk to counsel.”

Still, police are arresting drone users despite the legal uncertainty. In late April, a Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park ranger tased a drone pilot and arrested him for flying his small copter in the park, where drones are banned. Authorities charged him with “interfering with agency functions” and “operating an aircraft on undesignated land.”

In upstate New York, 50-year-old mobile-home salesman David Beesmer is facing unlawful-surveillance charges for a brief flight outside a medical office near his home. The drone couldn’t see through the office’s tinted windows, he says. But, acting on patients’ complaints, New York State Police arrested Mr. Beesmer—after he gave them a flight demo. The police declined to comment.

“They didn’t know what to do,” Mr. Beesmer said. “They had a formal complaint…and they probably did what they thought was best.”

Story, video, photo and comments:  http://www.wsj.com

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