DJI and the FAA Need to Get on the Same Page on NAS Integration

I just heard from Earl Lawrence, Director of the UAS Integration Office at the FAA, who delivered a keynote during yesterday's opening of the ICAO RPAS2017 conference being held in Montreal. It was a long winded and somewhat aggrandizing presentation you had to work to stay awake through, but I managed to do so and came away from it with some valuable intel on near term efforts on the part of the FAA to open the NAS for commercial drone integration.

One of the key points he made was the FAA was working feverishly to allow authorized drone operations in controlled airspace (class B, C, D, and E at the surface).

This involves the recent creation of more than 480 UAS Facility Maps for the nation's busiest airports, which identifies the location and maximum altitude which drones may be approved to fly in controlled airspace after submitting a waiver request to the FAA. These maps are now available via the FAA website. The image provided above is the UAS Facility Map for the Washington Dulles International Airport (IAD), which is designated as class B airspace.

A close examination of this map shows that it covers the donut hole of Dulles which extends from the surface and outward for 7 miles from the airport, and is a permanent restriction zone for unauthorized aerial operations of any sort. Each box or segment on the map represents 1 minute of latitude by 1 minute of longitude, or about 1 square mile. You can see there are plenty of segments where an approved drone operation up to 400 ft AGL may be allowed and only a minimal number of segments where no operation will be considered, most being in the immediate vicinity of one of the runways.

So now I have to step back and applaud the effort on the part of the FAA to publish these maps and begin to open up controlled airspace to drone activity. I won't say it again, but I think it was an exceptionally shrewd move to do this since it provides a relatively straight-forward and low risk path to NAS integration without requiring all the bells and whistles of a full and grandiose UTM system implementation that NASA is now researching for the FAA (more on this later).

Essentially, these maps along with an improved authorization process discussed below, position the FAA to claim victory on the NAS integration front without waiting for either the NASA UTM vision to materialize, or being fully dependent on it.

It doesn't take much to see how a waiver process that automatically evaluates a proposed flight plan for conformance with the designated UAS facility map could be readily implemented. In fact, the FAA is making this the cornerstone of their automated airspace authorization process they will begin to implement at the start of 2018. This is formally known as the Low Altitude Authorization and Notification Capability (LAANC).

It is aimed at using automation to make the Part 107 waiver approval process faster and easier in an effort to better accommodate the business opportunities of commercial drone operators. Interestingly enough, a lengthy and difficult waiver process is one of the top beefs noted by drone operators in the latest (2017) survey provided by Skylogic Research.

Lawrence also went on record yesterday by saying the facility maps used in conjunction with an automated waiver approval process "represents the first concrete step in the fielding of a UTM in the US". Cogitate on those words for a second.

So it's all good, right?

Unfortunately, the fly in the ointment may be DJI. Since they own a large majority of the US market share they need to get on board with this plan to make it work.

You may be aware the geofencing features released over the last year by DJI automatically prohibit the use of their platforms in designated no fly zones without authorization. The most severely impacted areas include "restricted zones" which tend to overlay a great many of the 480 some facility maps the FAA recently published, including the one for Washington Dulles illustrated above. If you actually have the FAA's approval to fly in a restricted zone, the only legal way you can get DJI to unlock the area is by sending them an email with supporting material. You can imagine how expedient and transparent this might be... NOT!

So there you have it. On the one hand we have a brilliant and actionable NAS integration plan conceived by the FAA to open up controlled airspace for drone activity. This by publishing pre-designated UAS facility maps and using an automated approval process with the potential to dramatically ease and speed the waiver process. And on the other hand we have DJI with their ineffective, non-scalable and generally silly geofencing solution that promises to negate and obliterate any efficiency and responsiveness generated by the FAA.

DJI and the FAA obviously need to get on the same page on this. Maybe they are, but all I hear is the sound of crickets on this one...