I am actually surprised the FAA was so tolerant of drones for so long. Commercial drone operators are for more regulation because they know the day some dope flies a drone into an approaching aircraft it will cause more draconian responses.
Meanwhile there are millions of unguided medium sized drones flying around airports and everywhere (Birds). I think the 400ft line of sight rule is plenty safe because short of aircraft taking off or making a final approach there aren't aircraft in this zone (Or should there be as flying so low would give a plane very little time to react to an engine failure.) If drones hitting people in the heads becomes a big issue, terrestrial laws are better to handle that. Generally besides areas very close to airports the FAA shouldn't be regulating <400ft AGL.
Ok then I suppose we should trim all trees to 50ft or less and ban structures that high, and exclude all birds from the skies there because an aircraft might be on a near crash unpowered approach. Also at that point, hitting a small drone is the least of their problems.
There are rules on structure height in approach paths. It doesn't restrict everything over 50 ft, but with drones we're talking 400 ft here, and they're practically invisible and don't carry transponders. If your drone crashes into an airplane, you buy a new one. The other guy might not be so fortunate.
At 400ft with a glide slope of 20:1 you are at 0ft in ~1.5 miles. You'd probably hit something else in a mile or less that is far more substantial than a drone at a lot greater probability.
A piston twin with one engine out may be unable to maintain altitude but have a drift down slope of way shallower than 20:1...
As a pilot, I have no objection to something sensible and low-risk like under 100' AGL more than a mile from an airport boundary without FAA involvement. Much over that, I want the FAA to have a say in the matter. I've had one close call on approach (defined as "close enough that I could see the drone lights visually from the cockpit").
Yea I'm actually OK with them being risk adverse, because I don't really want to have to worry about the plane I am flying in suddenly dropping out of the sky for any number of reasons.
Is it? Commercial flight isn't that much more dangerous in other developed countries.
Also, the FAA does grandfather in a lot of stuff. If the Cessna 172 was invented today, the FAA would never allow it to carry passengers or get near populated areas.
Lastly, I'm not sure if modern passenger jets would be allowed in the same way if invented today. The FAA would probably restrict them within 100 miles of urban areas. After all, what if people tried to crash them into buildings?
Don't let them know about the Experimental-Amateur Built category where anyone can build an airplane in their garage and a licensed pilot can go fly it with very limited FAA oversight of the construction...
> I bet if passenger planes were invented today, the FAA would never allow them
No, the Sikorsky Ilya Muromets [1], "the first aircraft...intended for carrying multiple passengers in commercial service" [2] wouldn't pass FAA muster.
I'm not sure that observation is useful, though. Before the Ilya Muromets, passenger air travel didn't exist. There was no baseline. (There was no FAA.) Today, we have a baseline from which parity or improvement is demanded. That future innovators are constrained in not sacrificing safety for e.g. fuel economy is intended.
I don't see in their regulation things to improve reliability of drones (parachutes, standard of manufacturing and care, stuff like that), just pure restriction of use. There is no mitigation here.
