Concerned about rising reports of close calls and safety risks involving drones, the US government on Monday announced it is to require many of the increasingly popular unmanned aircraft to be registered.
Pilot sightings of drones have doubled since last year, including near manned airplanes and at major sporting events, and there are reports of interference with wildfire-fighting operations, US Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx said at a news conference.
“These reports signal a troubling trend,” US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Administrator Michael Huerta said.
Registration is to increase pressure on drone operators to fly responsibly, he said, adding: “When they don’t fly safely, they’ll know there will be consequences.”
The FAA now receives about 100 reports per month from pilots who say they have seen drones flying near airplanes and airports, compared with only a few sightings per month last year. So far, there have been no accidents, but agency officials have said they are concerned that a drone weighing only a few pounds might cause serious damage if it is sucked into an engine or smashes into an airliner’s windshield.
Toys and small drones that do not present a safety threat are likely to be exempt from the requirement. Drones that weigh 1kg or less, or that cannot fly higher than a few dozen meters are considered less risky, but heavier ones and those that can fly hundreds of meters pose more of a problem.
To work out details, the FAA and the US Department of Transportation are setting up a task force including government and industry officials, pilots and hobbyists. They are to recommend which drones should be required to register.
It is hard to identify drones seen operating illegally near airports and airplanes or over crowds, and registration by itself will not change that. However, it would allow the FAA to identify drones when they can be recovered after landing or crashing, a common occurrence.
Earlier this year, drones operated illegally crashed on the White House lawn and at the New York stadium where the US Open Tennis Championships were being held. In both cases, the drone operators came forward. However, if they had not, the government would have had no way to identify them.
There is no official count of how many drones have been sold in the US, but industry officials say it is in the hundreds of thousands and will easily pass 1 million by the end of the year.
Foxx said he has directed the task force to deliver its report by Nov. 20 and hopes to have registration requirements in place by mid-December.
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