A horrible concept that could cripple our industry.
The Drone Service Providers Alliance along with AUVSI and CTA have come out in opposition to the various “avigation easement” bills that have been introduced in a multitude of statehouses across the United States. These bills create toll roads in the sky for drones and could lead to charges to access the sky to do our jobs with zero benefits to drone service providers. Many of the advocates for avigation easements talk about how these fees would pay for drone infrastructure. Yet, there is no indication of what the required infrastructure would be. Much of the infrastructure already exists in the form of cell towers and cellular networks. Which brings us to another point- to enable taxes and fees for entry into avigation easements requires a connection to a network. This is exactly what we as an industry and community rejected in the Remote ID NPRM. We did not want to pay for a constant connection to a network to have big brother watch every single movement of our drones, even those our kids are flying in our own backyards.
Further, these avigation easements would force drones into narrow corridors and over motor vehicle roads where the chance of collision between drones would be even higher. This would unacceptably increase the level of risk to people and property on the ground. Avigation easements would penalize drone operators for taking a safer route. Furthermore, while the FAA has published rules allowing for UAS flights over moving vehicles, the restrictive aspects of those rules would still mandate that virtually every drone operation that uses these easements would require a 107.145 Waiver. And those waivers are expected to be difficult to obtain. As they should be since sustained flights over moving vehicles introduce a myriad of safety concerns.
And what about operations outside those easements? Will they be restricted to VLOS flights? That negates one of the most economical benefits to last mile deliveries and other commercial UAS flights. The point of UAS use is that we don’t need to fly in “roads” in the sky. There is no need.
There is a concerted effort by companies that have a vested interest in making money through avigation easements to push these legislative efforts. Senator Lee’s bill ties directly into this effort. His bill would have given legs to avigation easements by expressly permitting states to control the first 200′ of airspace. What was even more problematic was that his bill would have allowed states to require their own of set of equipment on drones. Many of us fly across boundaries in just one flight. Would we have to land to swap out drones to be compliant as soon as we got to a border?
A patchwork of laws is harmful to our industry, and we believe that the path to accelerate our industry is through streamlined, uniform, and fair federal regulations. This would ensure everyone would fly under the same set of rules no matter where they are in the United States. We look forward to working with our partners to ensure that the avigation easement dreams of making money off of us for zero benefit are not realized. The FAA even uses the “patchwork quilt” warning in their guidance memo for states who are attempting to pass this type of airspace limiting regulation.
