Just over a year ago, we introduced UAS (drones) into our security survey and assessments, providing us with another great tool for making our security assessment more thorough and offering even more value to our clients.
During this time, we’ve flown over 250 flights (33 at night) covering more than 65 miles, with the most significant single mission distance being just over a mile. All complied with FAA regulations and, where required, local laws.
We’ve offered this service directly to our clients and indirectly as subcontractors, giving us valuable experience and insight into the industry and its potential while working closely with drone service aggregators, some great, some good, and some unfortunately bad.
The number of drone “pilots” with little to no experience offering services directly or through an aggregator is frightening. Many haven’t even passed the FAA Part 107 exam, the bare minimum requirement to operate commercially. Unlike all other pilot certificates issued by the FAA, there is no practical test to certify a commercial UAS pilot in the United States.
Unfortunately, this seems to be giving rise to federal, state, and local regulations that could stifle the industry. Essentially, the commercial growth and viability of the sector are being constrained by some, but not all, recreational operators operating as “commercial UAS pilots,” – Many legally because they have passed a test with a minimum score of 70%, or rather a C-minus. This allows them to operate commercially in our national airspace system – At low level, with all its challenges and obstacles, and on behalf of their clients who are unaware of the risks and looking only for the lowest price.
Nowhere is the risk higher than in the residential real estate and insurance markets, where brokers and agents are enabling the “grey market” without considering the risks involved or the liability they are incurring. And the low-end aggregators are happy to help – Often charging more than 300 dollars for each job and paying the drone operators, often working between Uber jobs and DoorDash deliveries, no more than $50. They rarely get a professional pilot for that pay.
Drones are relatively easy to fly with automation. But, they are not autonomous and require discipline, experience, and good judgment to operate safely. Despite how they often look in the finished postings, each site varies in complexity and often involve tight areas confined by power cables, trees, and critical infrastructure. Many are in controlled airspace, usually Class D, around airports.
And, each day, the risk of a catastrophe grows, as does the risk of destroying recreational drone operations while inviting a whole host of industry squelching and anti-competitive, local, state, and federal regulations on all levels of the commercial sector. It’s time for the UAS grey market enablers to wake up to the risk and for the FAA to impose more stringent requirements for the certification of “commercial” UAS pilots.
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