The Unmanned Aircraft Safety Team (UAST) Drone Sightings Working Group has released a new report on the FAA’s 3,714 drone sightings reports collected by flight crews, air traffic controllers and citizens from November 2015 to March 2017.
The report found that only a small percentage of drone reports pose a safety risk, while the vast majority are simply sightings.
In late 2016, the FAA tasked the UAST to review and analyze these drone sightings to draw conclusions and recommend safety improvements.
A working group within the UAST was formed with representatives from the unmanned aerial systems (UAS) industry, including those from the FAA, the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA), DJI, and the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA), as well as the Academy of Model Aeronautics (AMA) to review and analyze the sightings.
The UAST’s final report concluded that the vast majority of the drone sightings are of little to no risk.
The working group also cautioned regulators and policymakers against drawing concrete conclusions from the data, given “a notable amount of inconsistencies and unknowns.”
The findings and recommendations of the UAST are consistent with AMA’s prior analyses of the drone data dating back to September 2015, association officials noted.
“First, perhaps most significant, a relatively small percentage of analyzed sightings were categorized as being of risk,” the UAST writes in its report. “There is general consensus that some of the sightings are potentially high risk and need to be mitigated, but the majority of sightings are not necessarily high risk.”
In addition, the report finds that the FAA’s drone data is “too inconsistent and not standardized” and that the data must “be considered within its appropriate context.”
“Stakeholders from across the manned and unmanned community have agreed that the drone data needs to be improved in order to have an accurate understanding of what’s happening in our skies,” said Chad Budreau, director of public relations and government affairs at AMA.
“There’s no doubt that some of the sightings are problematic – about 3% of the sightings included in the dataset caused manned aircraft to change course or take evasive action,” Budreau said. “That is 3% too many and needs to change. At the same time, we must remember that the vast majority of the drone sightings are just that – sightings.”
The UAST report also cautions regulators and policymakers against relying on the data to inform safety, regulatory, or operational decisions.
“The current structure, inconsistency and unrefined nature of the sightings reports disproportionately exacerbate concerns about manned-unmanned interactions and do not provide industry or government with actionable data on which to base safety enhancements and regulatory or operational decision-making,” the UAST writes.
“For years, we have called on the FAA to improve and standardize the drone sightings data and we hope this new report will further encourage these changes,” said Budreau. “In the meantime, we will continue to work alongside the unmanned and manned aircraft community to educate the public about how to fly safely and responsibly. We have always believed that education is critical to keeping our skies safe.”
The full UAST report can be found at UnmannedAircraftSafetyteam.org.
Well, this report is actually an improvement: “The UAST’s final report concluded that the vast majority of the drone sightings are of little to no risk.” Previous stories considered every sighting to a near-tragedy.
Here’s what I think happens in 99.9% of the pireps by airline crews:
Co-pilot: “What is that”?
Captain: “I dunno, let’s call it a UFO”
Co-Pilot: “No one would believe that, let’s say it was a drone”.
I have been a commercial pilot for 25 years and I can assure you that I couldn’t identify something the size of a dinner plate 200 ft away while preparing for landing at 140 knots. No one has vision that good.
The panic, here, is completely out of any sort of proportion to reality. There is absolutely no factual evidence to support the fear and ignorance around small personal drones.
There is not one verifiable report of a collision between a small drone and a manned civil aircraft. Not one. When it happens, the aircraft crew is probably not going to be aware of it, and the drone pieces will be scattered over a square mile.
Keep the risk of personal drones in perspective.
Today (if this is an average day in the USA):
1560 people will die from Cancer
268 people in US hospitals will die because of medical mistakes.
162 people will be wounded by firearms in the US.
117 Americans will die in an automobile accident.
98 people in the US will die from the flu.
53 people will kill themselves with a firearm.
46 children will suffer eye injuries.
37 will die from AIDS.
30 people will die in gun-related murders.
18 pilots will report a Laser Incident
3 General Aviation airplanes will crash in the US.
0 people will be seriously injured or killed by a small drone accident.*
Zero. Why are so many supposedly rational people so terrified of zero?
* A band-aid is not a serious injury. CFR 49 §830.2 contains the definition of “Serious Injury” that the FAA and NTSB use in their aircraft and vehicular accident statistics. It is important to hold small UAS accidents to the same metric, otherwise comparisons are meaningless.
ONLY A SMALL PERCENTAGE OF DRONE REPORTS POSE SAFETY RISK?? Since when is a small percentage of dead bodies something we should accept?
It only takes one to cause a tragedy. There are, or will be, literally millions of these things flown by many unqualified people who don’t know the rules and don’t care about them. The professionals flying these things are not much of a risk, but toy drones flown by children, or by adults who may be irresponsible or ignorant of the rules are a major threat. Sooner or later, they will bring down manned aircraft, it is just a matter of time.
FAA rules that restrict drones to 400 feet or less and 5 miles from airports are intended to provide separation between manned aircraft and drones, but this is wishful thinking. The 400 foot and 5 mile rules are routinely violated by uneducated or irresponsible drone pilots. Even when these rules are adhered to, they do not provide separation from helicopters and seaplanes who legally fly lower than 400 feet away from airports on a routine basis.
Just waiting for the inevitable dead bodies. Then there will be an outcry to fix the problem. Except that by that time it will be too late to do anything about it because the authorities will be unable to corral the millions of existing drones in the field in order to apply needed safety equipment. The time to apply the fix is now, not after the bodies are buried.
Two things are needed:
1. Licensing of drone operators, requiring knowledge of the safety rules and passing a test in order to be licensed.
2. Anti-collision equipment on the drones so that they automatically land or retreat when in the presence of manned aircraft. This would be simple to accomplish because nearly all manned aircraft send out a signal that can be received by the drones. The cost would be minimal when spread out over the huge numbers of drones manufactured.
But since the government and the FAA have their heads in the sand, and the media are complicit, we will not get these safety improvements. Instead we will get dead bodies sooner or later. It is only a matter of time.
P.S. The author is a seaplane pilot.