Birth of UAS needs Congressional vision
The birth of the UAS air traffic world will require congressional action, new laws, new rules and regulations, and a mandate to look into the future. While the FAA has focused on regulating the unmanned world as it exists, Congress needs to signal a need for a vision of the future — the coming world where low-level UAS may become as common as automobiles — that will drive integration, innovation and experimentation.
Just as we have a traffic management system with highways, local roads, traffic signage and signals, and enforcement for surface transportation, the US will need to develop a similar system for the NAS.
Travelers United is urging the creation of a public/private UASFAB authorized to take a reasonable and educated look at the future. This group needs to focus on operational safety and privacy. The focus on this UASFAB will be on innovation, control, safety, integration and privacy.
These studies will shape the future of our aviation industry, stimulate innovation and knit together our country even more so than the vision, planning and construction of the Interstate Highway System.
Transformational Technology
As part of the FAA reauthorization bill, Travelers United urges Congress to authorize a UAS Future Advisory Board (UASFAB) to create a vision of the national airspace system (NAS) that will safely open it to integration of unmanned aerial systems.
Unmanned aircraft systems have the potential to affect consumers like few other transformational technologies ever have. For this technology to safely blossom in our national airspace, congressional direction is urgently needed.
The genie is out of the bottle
UAS are already working in the commercial world taking photos of agricultural fields, orchards, utility lines, pipelines, sporting events, real estate, construction operations, deliveries, movie making, news coverage, search and rescue and more.
Visionary UAS Future Advisory Board should be a part of FAA bill
Congress should ask for a future vision of the UAS industry and its integration into the NAS. That study group should look into the far future — 10, 20, 30 years out as the numbers and sophistication of UASs proliferate.
This UASFAB board should examine:
• A new air traffic management system for low level, small and medium UASs, plus anonymous flight rules (AFR) for full NAS integration.
• Possible bifurcation of the National Air Space into manned and unmanned elements — allow the FAA (or a new ATO operation) to control manned and passenger aircraft; and a new entity to set rules for UAS operations using autonomous flight rules and outside designated airport areas.
• An end to the different rules between model aircraft and commercial UAS
• An overview about privacy questions raised by UAS
Composition of UASFAB
Nine (9) members from the following groups:
FAA, NASA, Airline Pilots Group, Airlines, Academia, AIA, AUVSI, Small UAS Coalition, Consumers
Committee would report to Congress no later than June 2018 with suggested vision for nationwide UAS integration and operation.
The future is closer than any of us can imagine. Technology, once it is created and free for unfettered innovation, will surprise even today’s experts. A Jetson-like UAS platform that can carry passengers, guided by GPS, equipped with sense-and-avoid technology and operate totally autonomously, is less than five years away.
Charlie Leocha is the President of Travelers United. He has been working in Washington, DC, for the past 14 years with Congress, the Department of Transportation, and industry stakeholders on travel issues. He was the first consumer representative to the Advisory Committee for Aviation Consumer Protections appointed by the Secretary of Transportation from 2012 through 2018.
