Reckless Drones

It has been all over the papers. The U.S. aviation safety board has said that the Federal Aviation Administration has the authority to apply its long-standing rules against reckless or careless use of manned aircraft to drones.

Reuters reported that in making the ruling, the National Transportation Safety Board sent its first case involving an FAA fine against a drone back to an administrative law judge to determine if the drone flight in question was "careless or reckless."

The case involved the use of an unmanned aircraft way back in 2011 to make a video for the University of Virginia. The FAA fined the remote pilot $10,000 which prompted a lawsuit. An administrative law judge later found that the FAA did not have enforceable regulations against reckless use of unmanned aircraft, and the FAA appealed to the National Transportation Safety Board.

Just to show you how brilliant our government is, at one point last year, the FAA granted a license to fly drones to a production company making movies. So that's two movies that have been allowed to be made using drones. But, surely in our infinite wisdom, we will see the monitoring of crops by our nation's great farmers as "careless or reckless". To be continued I am sure.