Skip to footer

Expecting a drone this holiday season? The FAA wants to know about it.

The FAA has instituted a new policy that drone owners must register before flying outside. The move follows a report that shows hundreds of close encounters between drones and manned aircraft.

|
Carlo Allegri/Reuters/File
An airplane flies over a drone during the Polar Bear Plunge on Coney Island in the Brooklyn borough of New York January 1.

With some 700,000 hobby drones expected to arrive in homes this holiday season, the Federal Aviation Administration is looking to get a better handle on who is flying what.

On Monday, the FAA announced drone owners will need to register before they can fly. The policies shift follows a study that confirmed hundreds of close encounters between drones and manned aircraft. The federal government expects that the registry will facilitate distribution of legal and safety information about operating the hobby aircraft and will make it easier for the FAA to identify drone operators who violate those rules and potentially put aircraft at risk.

Most people who fly drones and model aircraft have little aviation experience, but they become pilots as soon as they start to fly. "They have the responsibility to fly safely, and there are rules and regulations that apply to them," Deputy FAA Administrator Michael Whitaker told the Associated Press.

The FAA currently receives more than 100 reports a month of drones flying near manned aircraft, commercial and private. Current rules prohibit any recreational aircraft from flying within five miles of an airport or higher than 400 feet, model airplanes and drones included.

As drones have become more affordable, their popularity has soared. Drone sales for 2015 are expected to top 1.6 million, with most coming around the holiday season and the end of the year.

“We expect hundreds of thousands of model unmanned aircraft will be purchased this holiday season,” said FAA Administrator Michael Huerta in a press release. “Registration gives us the opportunity to educate these new airspace users before they fly so they know the airspace rules and understand they are accountable to the public for flying responsibly.”

The new policy will affect all drones weighing between just over half a pound and 55 pounds, with the payload, including any attached cameras, included in the weight. Drone owners who are over 13 years old can register online and parents are expected to complete registration for younger children.

Drone owners who bought their aircraft before Dec. 21 will need to register by Feb. 19. Those who buy after that date will be required to register before their first outdoor flight. Registration costs will total $5, but those fees have been waived until Jan. 20 in anticipation of the large number drones expected to be given as gifts this month.

Model aircraft hobbyists will also be expected to register their crafts, a decision that has met some resistance.

According to the AP, the Muncie, Indiana-based Academy of Model Aeronautics, said registration is an "unnecessary burden for our more than 185,000 members who have been operating safely for decades."

This report includes material from the Associated Press.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Expecting a drone this holiday season? The FAA wants to know about it.
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/2015/1214/Expecting-a-drone-this-holiday-season-The-FAA-wants-to-know-about-it
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe