First Meeting of Drone Advisory Comittee

dacThe new Drone Advisory Committee (DAC) , that will make recommendations to the Federal Aviation Administration on integrating drones into the national airspace system, held its inaugural meeting September 16 as in the nation’s capital.

Present at the three-sided table were the leaders of several aviation trade associations based in the Washington,D.C. area, sitting alongside senior executives of companies including online retailer Amazon of Seattle and California-based Google and Facebook. Brian Krzanich, CEO of Santa Clara, California-based Intel Corp., is chairman of the committee, which also counts as members San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee and Deborah Flint,CEO of Los Angeles World Airports.

FAA Administrator Michael Huerta announced the plan to establish a drone committee representing industry and other “stakeholders” at the Xponential 2016 conference in New Orleans in May. In late August, the agency named 35 members to the DAC from the 400 people who expressed interest. Plans call for the committee to meet three times a year for two years; much of its detailed work will likely be done in smaller working groups.

The DAC is modeled on the FAA’s NextGen Advisory Committee, which has advised the agency in setting priorities for its long-running, multibillion-dollar effort to modernize the U.S. air traffic control system. Standards organization RTCA, which has official status as an advisory body to the FAA, administers both of the committees.

In basic terms, the DAC represents a confluence of the innovation in unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) coming in large part from California’s Silicon Valley and the Pacific Northwest, with the regulatory and political interests of the mainstream aviation industry centered in Washington, D.C. Giving opening remarks at the first meeting, Huerta noted that some members of the committee hail from the traditional aviation community where safety is a paramount focus; others come from “the entrepreneurial community, where taking risks and making bets is in your DNA.”

Huerta added: “We intentionally brought these distinct cultures together, and I’m not asking any of you to change your views.” Instead, he asked the group to agree on recommendations for the further integration of drones into the airspace system, and in the process “infusing it with the safety margin that the public expects and deserves.”

At least at the outset, the FAA appears committed to the effort. Joining Huerta at the table were several top FAAexecutives, including acting deputy administrator Victoria Wassmer, Air Traffic Organization chief operating officer Teri Bristol, associate administrator for aviation safety Peggy Gilligan, assistant administrator for policy, international affairs, environment and energy Jennifer Solomon, senior advisor for UAS integration Marke “Hoot” Gibson, and Earl Lawrence, director of the UAS Integration Office.

Lawrence briefed the committee on the immense challenge the FAA faces in regulating potentially hundreds of thousands of commercial drones and in maintaining safety with potentially millions more being flown by hobbyists. Some 12,000 people have applied to the FAA to operate drones commercially since the agency’s new Part 107 regulation took effect on August 29, and more than 500,000 have registered hobby drones through the agency’s on-line system. “It’s more than our traditional aviation profile,” Lawrence said. “The community is much larger and more diverse. What’s really unique is the sheer volume of operations and [their] personal nature.”

For example, Lawrence noted that the “follow-me” capability of some drones is not typical for aviation. “How do we deal with that? That’s not a Point A to Point B operation,” he observed.

Krzanich, who is a licensed pilot, said his goal as DAC chairman “is to make sure that every voice is heard…and that at the end of the day we make a recommendation to the FAA.” When Huerta asked him to lead the committee “it took all of less than 10 seconds to say ‘yes’ because I believe in this industry wholeheartedly,” he added.

The main problems that the DAC discussed were certification, flying beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS), performance standards, software and hardware development testing, Federal jurisdiction, privacy, cybersecurity, and autonomous operations.

“Drones have muscled their way in from being a niche activity of hobbyists to a significant player,” said Michael Huerta, administrator of the FAA, at the first DAC meeting. “History will judge us on how we rose to meet this challenge.”

The DAC serves an advisory role to the Federal Aviation Administration, will meet three times a year, and doesn’t have any enforcement power.

“For the people who live and breathe aviation and drones, the next steps might seem logical,” said Jenny Sullivan, manager and program analyst at the FAA and member of the DAC.

However, the committee is made up of 35 members from the government, traditional aviation business, academia, and the technology industry. Originally, 400 people applied to be members.

“This indicates an area where consensus will be hard to reach,” said Al Secen, vice president of aviation and technology standards at the Radio Technical Commission for Aeronautics (RTCA) and secretary of the DAC.

Secen presented the results of a survey of DAC members about their thoughts on the committee’s priorities. Most members said they think that the speed in which UAS are integrating into the National Airspace System (NAS) is too slow to appropriate. The number of people who believe that the process is too slow could be due to the number of members from Silicon Valley, who are used to faster innovation than those in Federal government.

“When an airliner flies over everyone’s head at 30,000 feet, no one really thinks it’s a big deal,” said Earl Lawrence, director of the UAS Integration Office at the FAA and member of the DAC. “Now we have drones that can follow you around and take pictures. How do we deal with that?”

Lawrence said that drones have more interested parties than traditional airlines because the low altitude of flight will cause more interactions with citizens.

Most committee members said their first priority is to have full integration to NAS. The FAA has already taken steps to do this by putting out Rule 107, which gives regulations for commercial drones.

After the FAA began regulating under Rule 107, it took one month for the number of registered drones to surpass the total number of registered manned aircraft. The number also surpassed the FAA’s estimate of the number of drones that would be registered in all of 2016. The FAA has had an average of 2,000 drone registrants per day.

The FAA wants to gradually update the Rule 107 regulations to fall in line with NAS, such as changing the rules on operations over people, small cargo and passenger transportation, nighttime flights, and BVLOS flights.

The committee said the biggest public perception issues were safety and privacy.

“Maybe there is an opportunity to reach out to the public and somehow find out what they want to say,” Secen said. “We just need to validate that these are in fact the public’s concern.”

The committee also said that the biggest regulatory concern was safety, but no members thought that privacy would be regulated in the future by the FAA. Instead, the committee said that privacy should be under the jurisdiction of other agencies.

“Safety is one of the common things everyone seems to agree on,” Lawrence said. “I think that’s a fabulous place to start.”

The biggest technology concerns were collision avoidance, cybersecurity, spectrum, electronic signatures, and big data management.

“This is all just data at this point,” Secen said. “We have a range of issues here that the board has agreed we need to pursue.”

Photo: Intel CEO Brian Krzanich and RTCA president Margaret Jenny preside at first Drone Advisory Committee meeting -Bill Carey

Sources: AIN Online; MeriTalk

 

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