FAA Sets Up Advisory Committee to Guide Drone Technology

The FAA drone advisory committee, a committee currently being set up by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), is expected to deal with the issues involving drones in the United States. It is after the fact that these unmanned aerial vehicles are now becoming common, so common that they can easily be bought by anyone by simply going to any walk-in store in the vicinity, even with the buyer not having official permission or authorization so much as a warrant.

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Hierarchy of the FAA Drone Advisory Committee

The FAA drone advisory committee, which is poised to be headed by none other than Brian Krzanich, the CEO of Intel, would border mainly on the use of these kinds of unmanned aircraft. Brian has been brought on board to ensure that competent hands are involved in the process of guiding the advisory committee on the integration of the activities of such unmanned aircraft as drones in the national airspace system. The FAA has long planned to impose rules regulating the commercial use of drones, and the committee’s formation just further solidified the possibility of this plan getting carried out soon. The much-awaited laws on drones are expected to open opportunities for big companies like Amazon and Google to use the unmanned aircraft for deliveries and other similar operations.

“By late spring, we plan to finalize Part 107, our small UAS rule, which will allow for routine commercial drone operations,” said FAA administrator Michael Huerta while speaking at a drone event. Huerta had also said earlier in January that at the end of the spring season, the rules would have already reached a finalization. There has, however, been some skepticism given that the process has always been stalled by a series of delays, one of the most prominent one being missing a Congress-mandated deadline.

Setup of the FAA Drone Advisory Committee

For the new FAA drone advisory committee to be set up, the members would include representatives who are coming from a wide variety of organizations who hold an interest in the drone technology, not exempting manufacturers and operators, pilots, the FAA drone advisory committee itself, providers of application services, NASA, the Department of Defense, and representatives from manned aviation. The new advisory committee, which would be responsible for making the rules concerning drone flying, would be largely unlike the UAS registration task force, an organization that was equally set up by the FAA. The UAS registration task force is expected to serve for a much longer time and serve nearly the same purpose as the NextGen Advisory committee that the FAA currently has on the ground, according to Huerta. Selections of people who would make the cut to come serve on the advisory committee would depend on the FAA alone. In February of last year, it has already been leaked that the rules that would be made by the FAA drone advisory committee would make it possible for programs such as the Amazon drone delivery to kick-start.    

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