Why FAA's Commercial vs Recreational Drone Policies Don't Fly

At a recent press conference held January 7th, 2015 at the CES Show in Las Vegas, FAA UAS Integration Manager Jim Williams was asked why the FAA views commercial drone use differently compared to recreational use in regards to NAS safety.

2015 CES Drone Press Conference

The response from Mr. Williams was "It's fairly established in past history, that people who are being paid to do a job are more likely to take risks in order to accomplish that than they are if they are just doing it for pleasure and that's the reason the rules are different for those two activities". 

The looks on the faces in the crowd must have been filled with utter dismay as all of the comments immediately following this statement vehemently disagreed with the FAA's position (as we do also) and here is why:

First of all there is no valid basis or data to support such a comment and position specifically for drones. Only within the last few months has commercial drone use been permitted by the FAA through exemptions and subsequently under FAA/NTSB scrutiny in regards to safety reporting. Further, if all known careless and reckless flights performed by unauthorized commercial operators in recent years was tallied, and this figure was then compared to the number of careless/reckless recreational flights.......well, we all know how lop-sided that comparison would be. In 10 years of flying camera drones, not once has anyone ever asked us to take photos or video from 5000' AGL.

People only do things they need or want to through some form of motivation. 

The typical motivation for a careless recreational drone pilot is to simply see if they can do something. Natural curiosity if you will. At more extreme levels, this is sometimes also known as thrill-seeking. How high can this drone fly? What does my city look like from 5000' high? How far away can I fly this drone? How close to something can I fly my drone if FPV? What do fireworks look like from my drone? What do my city's Xmas lights look like from my drone at night? These are all good examples of motivations for a careless drone hobbyist. It is also human nature to want to share such daring exploits with others and the more YouTube views the better!

This is in very stark contrast to the motivations of a commercial drone pilot and company. Their prioritized motivations are more along the lines of -

Making a profit
Keeping costs down
Staying ahead of the competition
Building a client base
Maintaining a good reputation

While there can be business motivations to get attention-grabbing, high-risk shots for marketing purposes, in general putting very expensive equipment at high risk is usually a very poor business model. Frequently broken equipment is not good for a productive bottom line. A perfect example of a more preferred risk management approach is the frequent use of disclaimer's that reads "professional driver on closed course" in automobile advertising.

Looking at the list of motivations for a commercial drone operation, putting equipment, persons and company reputations at excessive risk is directly counter to every single item listed above in a very big way. Insurance is also a consideration. Aviation liability insurance is expensive and hard to keep for those prone to frequent claims. Careless hobbyists aren't covered by insurance when not following the safety code of a "community based organization" such as the AMA.

So in conclusion, since the FAA's commercial vs recreational regulatory policies are not based on data, logic, trends or observations, the question that begs to be asked is...what are they "really" based on, truth be known?

Top 5 Reasons Small Drones Crash More Often Than Manned Aircraft

General aviation remains one of the safest forms of transportation with a fatal accident rate per 100,000 flight hours of only 1.05 in the United States in 2013. The non-fatal accident rate per 100,000 flight hours was 5.85 during the same period. It isn't easy to make an apples to apples comparison with drone accident rates because, for the most part, small drone accidents happen often and most go undocumented.

2013 U.S. Aviation Statistics

Our estimated accident rate (non-fatal) for even the most experienced commercial drone operation would likely be on the order of approximately 1 accident every 250 flight hours for a rate per 100,000 flight hours of 400. There are many reasons for the wide gap compared to manned aircraft accidents but this article will focus only on what we see as the top 5.

#5 - Multirotor drones have very limited flight test data to learn from.
     
Today's small drones, for all intents and purposes, are very similar to RC aircraft. The first RC gliders, for example, have been around since the mid 30's. The first successful RC helicopter flight took place in 1969 by German engineer Dieter Schluter. Multirotor's however are a very recent development with the earliest versions only taking off within the last 8 years or so. An early pioneer in RC helicopters named Don Chapman actually described the basic multirotor concept to me in his Dayton Ohio basement way back in the mid-90's however Li-po batteries, brushless motors, electronic speed controllers and low cost flight control technology were not available at that time.

As aircraft accumulate substantial flight hours, lessons learned such as "mean time between failures" (MTBF) contribute significantly to improving overall reliability. At present single rotor helicopters tend to be a more reliable aerial platform than multirotors, all else being equal, solely because the knowledge and evolution of SR designs has had a several decade head start.

#4 - Small drones fly close to the ground so errors in judging depth perception are common.

When the pilot is inside an aircraft, it is much easier to judge its distance from other objects. For unmanned aircraft flown by line-of-sight (LOS), the drone pilot's eyes are focused primarily on the aircraft in flight and so it is quite easy to lose track of spacing from various objects projecting up from the ground. Also, the accuracy of a person's depth perception drops off dramatically with distance. 

#3 - Small drones aren't built to any formal or recognized quality standards.

As mentioned above, small unmanned aircraft tend to use RC hobby grade components, few of which are built to ANSI, ASTM, ISO or MIL-SPEC quality standards. Sudden unexpected failures can be a frequent event as a result. It is also common to overload systems through trial and error verses having the benefit of accurate operating limits for key components.

#2 - Flying a drone manually is more difficult than flying a manned aircraft manually.

This is primarily due to the fact that the unmanned aircraft pilot is unable to benefit from several key senses, such as sensing motion first hand or detecting changes in vibration for example. When seated inside an aircraft, the relative direction of control remains constant; this is not so for unmanned aircraft. A very common cause for drone crashes is from disorientation following loss of GPS control. When a drone's heading changes, the relative control direction from the pilots perspective can become reversed. The symmetrical design of many multirotors tends to exacerbate this problem.

#1 - Small drone pilots typically aren't formally trained and have widely varying skill levels.

Many aspiring drone pilots think that because the flight controller is doing most of the work that additional flying skills aren't terribly important. This theory only works up to the point that something doesn't go as expected. Being able to react quickly and correctly to an emergency only comes from many hours of flight training, simulation and experience. At the highest level are RC competition pilots who typically have thousands of hours experience building, tuning and flying unmanned aircraft.

There are also less tangible factors that affect the overall reliability of an unmanned aircraft. It is a common mindset that each drone has a number and it isn't "IF" a crash will occur but rather "WHEN". This is a dramatically different mindset from a full size aviator. 

Perfect Perspectives has been able to dramatically improve the reliability of its unmanned systems over the last 10 years by applying concepts such as "all accidents are preventable" along with management of change (MOC) principles and near-miss tracking. Each time a maintenance function, repair or modification is performed, key questions are asked such as - "how might this change unintentionally result in a malfunction?". Going through this thought process has proven very effective in avoiding otherwise unexpected failures. Also any event that is abnormal to the standard flight process is recorded on the Flight Safety Analysis form as a "near-miss". These events are not near mid-air collisions with full size aircraft but rather are any operational close calls that could have caused an accident if not detected beforehand. Studies have shown that for every accident that occurs, there can be 100 or more near-misses that went unacknowledged as a precursor. Taking note of, and incorporating preventive measures for all near misses has proven very effictive in reducing accidents. The combination of all of these techniques has allowed Perfect Perspectives to safely make thousands of flights over several years without incident.