Hundreds of thousands of unmanned aircraft are expected to be sold between Black Friday and the end of the year, providing a boon for the nascent industry — and a headache for aviation safety officials.
“There’s a sense of excitement about this innovative new technology and what it can do,” says Doug Johnson, vice president of technology policy at the Consumer Technology Association, an industry trade group. The CTA estimates that 400,000 consumer drones will be sold during the holiday season, bringing this year’s total number to 700,000. About 435,000 of the flying gadgets were sold through all of 2014, the group estimates.
In all this holiday hoopla, drone companies see an opportunity to break into the mainstream for the first time. Parrot’s Bebop drone was featured on the front page of Target’s Black Friday ad this year, above items like Beats headphones and Microsoft’s Xbox One. Parrot generated $42 million from consumer drones in the third quarter this year, a 60% increase from the same period a year ago. “We definitely feel the excitement out there,” says Mike Perez, president of Parrot North America.
Perhaps the biggest danger, however, is the number of new drone owners who will take to the skies this month without knowledge of airspace rules or best practices for staying safe.
“As we see the holiday season progress, more and more public individuals are going to be buying these systems and they’re going to be flying them without a true understanding of the danger they present to manned aircraft and innocents,” says Hulsey Smith, CEO of Aero Kinetics, a company that consults businesses on how to best implement drones.
“We needed a system that was focused on the owner-operator,” says the CTA’s Johnson, who was a member of the task force. “We came to a consensus on ways to accomplish registration that would ultimately be successful for the marketplace as something simple, easy.”
The FAA won’t say whether the registration system will be in place before Christmas, or whether the final rules will mirror the task force’s recommendations. “We are working quickly and flexibly to move toward the next steps for registration,” an agency spokesperson said.
It’s also not yet clear what will happen to drone users who don’t register with the agency. Penalties for such a lapse may exceed $25,000, according to the task force’s draft. But those high fines are aimed at people suspected of crimes like drug trafficking and tax evasion. The task force has recommended that the FAA implement less arduous punishments for hobbyists who flout the rules out of ignorance rather than malice.
Photo: A DJI employee shows off the “Phantom 2” during the “CP+2014 – Toshifumi Kitamura—AFP/Getty Images
Source: TIME