part 107

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In Washington, D.C. last week, the U.S. House of Representatives Unmanned Systems Caucus and the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) held a briefing for congressional staff on technologies that enable unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) to operate longer distances and at higher altitudes in the U.S. national airspace.

The briefing included two panels of…

The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) of the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) has announced an audit of the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) “approval and oversight processes” for Part 107 waivers for unmanned aerial systems (UAS) operations. The audit will begin before month’s end and will assess the FAA’s processes for granting waivers and…

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) plans to release a set of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) facility maps on April 27, 2017. These maps will help drone operators improve their Part 107 airspace authorization requests, and in turn, hopefully help the FAA process these requests more quickly. The maps will include specific areas and altitudes near…

Last week, Maryland’s Cecil County Sheriff’s Office used an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to recover nearly $400,000 worth of stolen construction equipment, which also led to the arrest of the culprit. The New Jersey State Police, Pennsylvania State Police and Delaware Fish and Wildlife Natural Resources Police were all investigating this case—the construction equipment had…

Back in August 2016, when the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced its final small unmanned aerial systems (UAS) rule (or Part 107) FAA administrator, Michael Huerta said, “Our focus is to make this as streamlined as possible [. . .] We do not envision this being a very burdensome process.” However, Part 107 limits flights…

Last week, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) proposed a new rule for performance-based standards and means-of-compliance for operation of small unmanned aircraft systems (UAS or “drones’) over people who are not directly participating in the drone operation. This is contrary to the Small UAS Rule (or Part 107 as it is commonly called), which explicitly…

At a recent Commercial Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) Expo in Las Vegas, Nevada, a Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) attorney, Dean Griffiths, explained that the top three requests for Part 107 commercial drone operations waivers were for night operations, operations over people, and flight beyond visual line of sight. For operations over people and flights beyond…

Since the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) started allowing commercial drone operations, media organizations have moved quickly to get their own news-gathering drones in the skies. Recently, Sinclair Broadcast Group (Sinclair) (operator of 173 television stations across the U.S.) announced that it was going “all in” on its news-gathering drone fleet. Sinclair plans to have 80…