Follow the Rules or Pay the Price...Literally

Written by Andre Louis-Ferdinand

Recently I had a not-so-pleasant conversation with a drone "operator" that took a nice photograph from an altitude of 1,100 ft. I promptly asked him where this was taken and he told me that it was from inside the U.S. I mentioned that he should not publicly announce the altitude and he should not do that again. I kindly explained that, according to FAA regulations, he must "Fly below 400 feet and remain clear of surrounding obstacles." He immediately got defensive and told me he would do "whatever he wanted" and that I should "loosen up and not be afraid of the rules."

Of course, I don't need to "loosen up." Being a licensed pilot, I know the FAA's Regulations are written in blood and should be respected. The FAA, while conservative and sometimes frustrating with their rules, have good reason to regulate the way they do. Commercial aviation in the United States is EXTREMELY safe. If you flew "every day of your life, probability indicates that it would take you nineteen thousand years before you would succumb to a fatal accident!" Let's break this down real quick. Every three seconds, commercial airliners take hundreds of people to 30,000 ft above the Earth and move them through the air at over 500 miles an hour... Clearly, the FAA is doing something right.

The reason I bring all of this up is because yesterday "The FAA announced the largest civil penalty to date...against a drone operator for violating airspace restrictions." They proposed a 1.9 million dollar fine on aerial photography company SkyPan International, Inc. of Chicago. "The FAA alleges that the company flew 65 unauthorized drone flights over various locations in New York City and Chicago between March of 2012 and December of 2014, 43 of these in the highly congested and restricted New York Class B airspace." Skypan International will have 30 days to respond to the fine. The company did not have an official statement on the proposed fine when contacted yesterday morning. This will likely bankrupt their company, as 1.9 million is a lot of capital for a starter drone company and their clients will not longer do business with them. The FAA is making an example of those that do not follow the rules in aviation. If the drone operator I spoke to is ever caught, he would face tens of thousands of dollars in fines and up to a year in jail. As the title of this post suggests, follow the rules or pay the price...