Richard H. Moore: Drone rules are modest

An editorial cartoon depicted the owner of a “Drone Store” announcing that the government would soon be requiring owners to register their drone “toys” (Oct. 26 Opinion). I surmise that this message was meant to appeal to those who constantly complain about government regulations.

However, as a pilot, I can tell you that the proposed regulation is a modest effort by the Federal Aviation Administration to assure that drone owners and operators act responsibly with their new toys.

If individuals wish to operate a drone for commercial purposes, they must be a licensed pilot and apply for and obtain an FAA permit. The drones are restricted to altitudes of less than 200 feet for operations. If they wish to operate within five miles of an airport, they must receive another permission from the airport operations manager for each time they wish to enter that five-mile radius around a particular airport. Within a 20-mile radius of downtown Wichita, there are 10 public-use airports and some 15 private airstrips.

These rules apply equally to agriculture and geographical surveyors, news gatherers, police and fire operations, state and local government operations, photographers, etc. Break the rules, and forfeit the required permissions and ability to fly drones for your business.

Hobbyists, on the other hand, are permitted to operate at altitudes up 400 feet and also required to keep the drone within visual sight at all times. They are not permitted to operate within five miles of an airport and cannot receive any permissions to do so, but no federal permissions are required to operate within these parameters.

A recent industry estimate said there would be about a million drones sold as Christmas presents this year. The rules for the hobbyists will be included in the box, but do you know how high 400 feet is? My guess is the hobbyists won’t either.

Do you know the location of some 25 airports around Wichita? The Kansas Department of Transportation website gives the map, and there are very few places in Wichita where one could legally fly a drone, commercially or as a hobbyist.

Wichita has about one-thousandth the population of the U.S., so there could be 1,000 drones sold to hobbyists in Wichita this December. After Christmas, how safe will you feel landing at Eisenhower National Airport knowing there will be some 1,000 new drones in the hands of people who have little experience operating drones and no practical knowledge of their FAA operational limits?

In addition, many of these new drone pilots will have adolescent brains with built-in poor judgment and impulsivity. Registering drones helps to ensure that older operators will be responsible themselves and that adults will be responsible to see that their children and teenagers are operating within the FAA rules.

If a drone ends up ingested in a jet engine, the serial number of the drone will identify the person operating in prohibited airspace.

I, for one, want drones out of my airspace, whether I am flying as the pilot or as a passenger, and registration seems a relatively painless way to go to help assure the rules will be followed. There is a lot at stake here, and lives are on the line – mine for one, yours for another.

This story was originally published October 29, 2015 at 7:05 PM with the headline "Richard H. Moore: Drone rules are modest."