FAA’s power to police civilian drones bolstered by U.S. ruling

The Federal Aviation Administration’s authority to regulate civilian drones was upheld Tuesday in a ruling that gives the U.S. government more power to police the fast-growing use of unmanned aircraft.

Drones are aircraft subject to restrictions on unsafe flight activity, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board found. The decision preempts a March 6 ruling by an administrative law judge who said the FAA has no authority over small unmanned aircraft.

The FAA, which oversees the nation’s aviation system, has been trying to bring order to the skies amid increasing use of unmanned drones by civilians, including surf photographers, Hollywood directors and real-estate agents.

“It’s an interesting decision and it clearly has great symbolic value,” said Rebecca MacPherson, a former FAA lawyer who works at Jones Day law firm in Washington. The impact of the case will be limited by congressional action and new regulations expected soon, she said.

The case grew out of a $10,000 fine the FAA imposed against Raphael Pirker, who flew a small plane over the University of Virginia in 2011 to film a promotional video without the agency’s permission. The case, in which the FAA said Pirker’s flight was “careless or reckless,” was the first fine against a drone operator.

The NTSB overturned the March decision, saying the FAA had authority over drones all along. Language in U.S. regulations clearly says the FAA can police “any aircraft, manned or unmanned, large or small,” the review panel said in a ruling on its website.

‘Narrowly limited’

Pirker is still reviewing options for how to respond to the decision, his lawyer, Brendan Schulman, said in an email. He called the ruling “narrowly limited” and said other court cases challenging the FAA’s authority are also pending.

The FAA didn’t immediately respond to emails seeking comment.

The case garnered national attention and made it more difficult for the FAA to enforce restrictions on drone users. It now goes back to original Judge Patrick Geraghty to rule whether the flight violated FAA regulations. There may be more appeals before the issue is settled.

Congress in 2012 ordered the FAA to craft rules to safely integrate drones into U.S. skies by 2015. The agency doesn’t expect to allow all drone operations by then and will instead phase them into the system over a longer period, FAA Administrator Michael Huerta told a Senate hearing Jan. 15.

Near misses

Proposed regulations governing commercial drones weighing less than 55 pounds are expected from the FAA before the end of the year.

Small unmanned helicopters and fixed-wing planes, which can be bought at hobby shops and online for less than $1,000 and require little training to fly, are testing the FAA’s ability to police the skies.

Drones have been spotted in increasing numbers by pilots flying near airports, including an unmanned aircraft that almost struck a US Airways plane over Florida in March, according to the FAA. US Airways is part of American Airlines Group Inc.

Judge Geraghty initially ruled “there was no enforceable FAA rule” on the type of model aircraft Pirker used flying over the Charlottesville, Virginia, campus on Oct. 17, 2011.

Pirker flew under bridges, near statues and over pedestrians, as documented on video he shot that day. His plane weighed less than 5 pounds and was made with a foam wing.

Geraghty ruled the FAA’s regulations didn’t apply to people piloting a “model” plane. The FAA and Congress have exempted from regulation drone flights that are “solely for hobby or recreational reasons.”

Even though commercial drone flights aren’t approved by FAA, they’ve been used to film scenes in the Martin Scorsese-directed movie “The Wolf of Wall Street” and sporting events for Walt Disney Co.’s ESPN. They’ve inspected oilfield equipment, mapped agricultural land and photographed homes and neighborhoods for real estate marketing, according to industry officials, company websites and videos on the Internet.

The University of Michigan canceled plans to deliver the game ball to its football field with a drone on Sept. 20 because the FAA said it wasn’t permitted. The agency later updated its order barring flights over large sporting events to make clear it considers drones to be a type of aircraft.

Flight exemptions

While the FAA hasn’t yet proposed rules governing commercial operations of small drones, in September it granted the first waivers allowing such flights for six movie-production companies seeking to mount cameras on small aircraft.

The agency has also given permission for two oil companies to use drones in the Arctic regions of Alaska for inspections.

Drones are forecast to create 100,000 jobs and $82 billion in economic impact in the first 10 years after the FAA allows flights, according to a forecast by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, an Arlington, Virginia-based trade group.