In what the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) says is a first for US aviation, it has authorised commercial drone flying without visual observers in the same Dallas-area airspace.
Authorisations have been granted to Zipline International and Wing Aviation to allow them to deliver packages while keeping their drones safely separated using unmanned aircraft system traffic management (UTM) technology.
With UTM, the industry manages airspace subject to that the FAA describes as “rigorous safety oversight” from itself.
The new authorisations are a move away from traditional policy, which has been for drone pilots to always be able to see their unmanned aircraft.
But the FAA says that new advances in air traffic technology and procedures will enable beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) flights to become routine.
“With UTM, there will be a cooperative interaction between drone operators and the FAA to determine and communicate real-time airspace status,” the FAA said.
“The FAA will provide real-time constraints to the Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) operators, who are responsible for managing their operations safely within these constraints without receiving positive air traffic control services from the FAA.
“The primary means of communication and coordination between the FAA, drone operators, and other stakeholders is through a distributed network of highly automated systems via application programming interfaces (API), and not between pilots and air traffic controllers via voice.”
State-of-the-art technology
When using UTM services, companies can share data and planned flight routes with other authorised airspace users.
This allows the operators to safely organise and manage drone flights around each other in shared airspace.
All flights must, however, be made below 400 feet and away from any crewed aircraft.
The FAA expects initial flights using UTM services to begin this month (August) and said that it will be issuing more authorisations in the Dallas area in the near future.
Amazon authorisation
Earlier this summer, the FAA granted Amazon permission to operate parcel delivery drones on a BVLOS basis.
Until that point, e-commerce giant Amazon’s drone operations in the US had been limited to line of sight.
Operating BVLOS will allow Amazon to serve more customers via drone package delivery in the Texas city of College Station where its drone operation has been running for the last couple of years.
“Now that we’ve been granted these permissions by the FAA, we’ll immediately scale our operations in College Station with our current MK-27 drone to reach customers in more densely populated areas,” Amazon said in a blog post.
NPRM
Other ongoing drone-related developments include the FAA continuing to work on new Normalizing UAS BVLOS Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) requirements, which would enable drone operators to expand operations while maintaining the same high level of safety as traditional aviation.
The FAA expects to release the NPRM this year.
According to the FAA, with regard to drones, “Industry has created the market and technology, and the agency has worked with them on creative solutions to ensure operations can be done safely.”
UTM services are, it believes, “A clear example of this innovative approach. The NPRM has been designed to allow operations to scale with the size of the industry.”
