Drone journalists get very good news – instant waivers

One of the systems that pilots will use is AirMap.  The company says, “Drone operators will enter the details of their flight with just a few taps, and in areas where flights are pre-approved, receive instant authorization to fly.” Systems like AirMap will allow you to select the area you want to fly on the app, and it will give you a quick idea of whether there are restrictions on the airspace.  If there is a restriction but it is possible to fly with a waiver, the app prompts the pilot to ask for permission.  You should get a response right away, not in 90 days as is currently the case.

From https://www.airmap.com/faa-uas-facility-maps-laanc/

The backbone of this whole system is the FAA’s new unmanned aircraft system facility maps that the government is rolling out.  Those maps will give pilots a pretty good idea of whether they are likely to get waiver approval before they bother sending in a request. (Note: if you click on the above link it takes a few seconds for the maps to populate the page.  The FAA is adding new data constantly and the map is supposed to be complete by October 31, 2017.) If you see on the map that the ceiling where you want to fly is zero, then there is no reason to ask for a waiver.

“To be clear, this isn’t going to magically solve all of the issues around using drones for journalism,” Waite said. “Drone pilots will still have to avoid flying over people, we’ll still have conflicts between journalists and law enforcement officers about when and where drone cameras can be used, and we’ll still have ethical decisions to make. But this starts to remove a significant obstacle.”

Mickey Osterreicher, legal counsel for the National Press Photographers Association, also teaches in our Drone School. He told Poynter that “as technology advances at an exponential rate, we often see the gap between regulations and implementation getting wider. This announcement is a perfect example of how technology can also be used to bridge that divide by automating the previously time-consuming manual process of approving such authorizations to fly in controlled airspace. This is but one of many hoped-for technological solutions that will make the use of drones for newsgathering as commonplace and easy to comply with as doing an internet search on one’s computer.”

AirMap says on its website that journalists are just some of the pilots who will benefit from faster airspace approval.

Without at least 90-days’ notice, most jobs never get off the ground. That’s a big deal. The top drone-friendly industries include real estate, construction, logistics, infrastructure, and public safety, all of which exist to serve populated areas. Not surprisingly, substantial portions of these areas exist in controlled airspace near the airports that serve them. Without a smarter airspace authorization solution in place, the United States economy is missing out the $127.3 billion global market value of the commercial drone sector.

McNeal says these airports will put the instant approval system in place first. The list goes from the largest airports (Class B) to smaller regional airports (Class E):