Amazon among companies asking FAA to expand drone rules

Amazon is among a host of companies asking the Federal Aviation Administration to expand the abilities of small commercial drones and the traffic control system that would monitor them.

The online retailer specifically wants to be able to fly drones beyond the line of sight of pilots and to allow pilots to monitor multiple drones. The FAA's current proposal, announced in February, would allow individual drones weighing up to 55 pounds to fly within sight of their remote pilots during daylight hours.

Flying beyond the line of sight is crucial for Amazon's plans for its Prime Air 30-minute delivery service, says Amazon's vice president of public policy Paul Misener in comments filed with the FAA on Friday. That ability "will unlock the transformative potential that small (unmanned aircraft systems) offer for package delivery and myriad other exciting, and even lifesaving, applications – for example, the delivery of medical supplies and search and rescue operations."

The FAA received more than 4,400 comments by the deadline Friday about rules proposed in February for commercial drones weighing up to 55 pounds. The FAA will now spend an estimated 18 to 24 months to analyze the comments and possibly change its proposals.

Drone advocates are eager for ground rules to share the skies with passenger aircraft because the industry could create 100,000 jobs and $82 billion in economic activity in its first decade, according to the trade group Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International.

Brian Wynne, CEO of AUVSI, called the FAA proposal a good first step. But his group urged the FAA to allow the aircraft to fly at night and beyond sight of the remote pilot.

For example, Wynne said agriculture, which is expected to become 80% of the commercial-drone market, needs aircraft to fly farther than a pilot can see to monitor crops for fertilizers and pesticides.

"In the United States, we're at a pivotal moment in the history of" drones," Wynne said. "The benefits of this technology are broad and we need to make sure we're doing all we can to support its growth and development."

Joining Amazon in asking the FAA to allow for the potential of multiple drones to be monitored by one pilot is the Small UAV Coalition, which includes among its members GoPro, GoogleX, Amazon and drone makers DJI and Parrot. "With the advance of automation, we expect that a single SUAS (small unmanned aircraft system) operator will be able to program multiple (drones) so they can be safely operated simultaneously."

That prohibition, Amazon says in its filing, "limits many of the benefits (drone) technology can offer."

Amazon is among those companies that have gotten FAA exemptions to begin testing drones flying up to 400 feet high and at up to 100 miles an hour over private property and within sight of the remote-control pilot or a designated observer. For now, the flights are supposed to remain at least 500 feet away from other people.

That's another restriction that companies and groups including the Small UAV Coalition considers "overly restrictive" and wants reconsidered.