FAA streamlines approval for some commercial drone use
David Morgan / Reuters :
Context & Ripple Effects
This lands between two bookends of the FAA's 2015 posture: February's proposed rules would let commercial drones fly without a pilot's license but keep them within line of sight, explicitly stalling services like Amazon Prime Air, while January's CNN-FAA newsgathering agreement showed the agency granting bespoke exemptions case by case. Streamlining the approval process is the interim fix while those formal rules wait on a June 2016 target the FAA's deputy administrator committed to.
First-order effects
- Operators stuck in the exemption queue — newsgatherers like CNN and delivery hopefuls like Amazon — can now get commercial clearances through a faster process instead of one-off negotiations with the FAA.
Second-order effects
- Faster approvals raise pressure on the formal rulemaking clock, since every streamlined grant weakens the argument for waiting out the June 2016 finalization deadline; the FAA also broadened testing to urban areas and beyond operator sight lines weeks later.
Third-order effects
- If each incremental loosening holds, the endpoint looks like the 2016 framework recommendation and the 2017 program to loosen drone testing over people and beyond line of sight — regulation normalizing commercial flight rather than confining it.
The trend: Drone regulation is shifting from blanket line-of-sight restrictions toward incremental FAA approvals that progressively normalize commercial operations.