Story ID: BCHouseDroneHearing12102014
Airline Pilots Recommend Go-Slow Approach on Drones
By: Bill Carey
Caption: The Air Line Pilots Association contends that pressure to introduce drones into the U.S. national airspace system should not override safety.
Word Count: 527
The main union representing pilots at U.S. and Canadian airlines called for a go-slow approach to permitting wider use of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) during a hearing before the U.S. House Transportation Committee. The Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) also wants UAS to be equipped with collision-avoidance capability and their operators trained to an equivalent standard with manned aircraft pilots.

“We must not allow pressure to rapidly integrate UAS into the NAS [National Airspace System] to rush a process that must be solely focused on safety,” ALPA president Lee Moak told the committee on December 10. “Standards and technologies must be in place to ensure the same high level of safety as currently present in the NAS before a UAS can be authorized to occupy the same airspace as airliners or operate in areas where it might inadvertently stray into airspace used by commercial flights.”

Moak, a Delta Air Lines captain who is nearing the end of his four-year term as ALPA’s president, testified with other subject matter experts as pressure builds on the Federal Aviation Administration to release a long-delayed notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) that will establish rules for small UAS weighing up to 55 pounds. The proposed rule is currently under “executive review,” according to the agency. However, even if the NPRM is published by year-end, as the FAA has promised, potentially “tens of thousands” of comments could postpone its release of a final rule until 2017 or later, said Gerald Dillingham of the Government Accountability Office.

While numerous commercial entities, including online retailer Amazon, want the FAA to provide easier access to the airspace for UAS, reports of unauthorized, potentially hazardous “drone” flights are on the rise. From June through November, there were 25 reports of near misses between drones and manned aircraft in the U.S., many of them occurring near large airports, The Washington Post reported last month, based on records the FAA released at its request. The FAA is trying to contain the risk by supplying educational materials to drone manufacturers and buyers, Margaret Gilligan, the agency’s associate administrator for Aviation Safety told the committee.

Moak brought to the hearing a DJI Phantom quadcopter he purchased online “for a few hundred dollars,” telling the committee that “as the marketing promised, it was ready to fly in a few minutes and I was flying it in my office.” The model he displayed can fly as high as 6,600 feet. “That means it could easily end up in the same airspace I occupy when I’m on approach to land at Newark or at Seattle or at any other airport,” he said.

“It’s essential that UAS pilots are highly trained, qualified and monitored to meet the equivalent standards of pilots who operate manned aircraft,” said Moak. “If UAS are intended to be operated in civil airspace or could unintentionally be flown into our airspace, airline pilots need to be able to see them on our cockpit displays and controllers need the ability to see them on their radar scopes. UAS aircraft also need to be equipped with collision avoidance capability.”