How’s the FAA Doing? You Tell Us: Results from a 5-Minute Su…

Recently we put collectively a brief, casual survey in partnership with a contact we’ve got at the FAA to assist consider how properly drone pilots suppose the FAA is doing with regards to educating them and the public about sUAS insurance policies.

In the finish we had 493 individuals fill out the 5 minute survey. In this put up we’re going to assessment the solutions we acquired, and talk about any tendencies we seen amongst the responses.

By the manner, should you participated, THANK YOU. We actually recognize your taking the time to share your ideas with us.

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Who Were the Respondents?

About 2/three of respondents recognized as business pilots, and 1/three recognized as hobbyists (with a handful of Other / Non-pilot respondents as properly):

So based on the of us who chimed in, how properly is the FAA doing with regards to educating individuals about drones? Let’s take a look.

How Do Drone Pilots Interact with the FAA and FAA Resources?

The first part of survey questions pertains to how individuals work together with FAA assets.

It’s fairly neat that 89% of respondents have been uncovered to the FAA’s webpages and FAQ supplies. Given that about 7% of respondents most likely don’t fly, this implies virtually everybody who flies and responded to the survey interacts with the FAA web site indirectly.

Which is nice information.

The first step in ensuring the skies are secure, and drones are being flown responsibly by business and hobbyist pilots alike, is solely understanding what the FAA recommends.

The subsequent query is just like the first:

These numbers aren’t too stunning, on condition that the B4UFLY app isn’t essentially for everybody, and that there are different apps that may serve related capabilities. 56% continues to be fairly darn excessive, when you consider it.

And of these 56% who say they use it, the B4UFLY app appears to have a fairly excessive approval ranking:

One final information level about how individuals work together with the FAA is that this query about whether or not respondents had ever contacted somebody at the FAA. We had been happy to see that about a quarter of the respondents had executed so:

27% of the drone pilots surveyed reaching out to the FAA looks as if a nice proportion.

To us, this means that individuals 1) Know that the FAA is the place to go together with questions on airspace (fairly primary, however hey, nonetheless a good factor!); and a couple of) Feel comfy reaching out to them. The second level shouldn’t be a small one—are you able to think about contacting the Department of Transportation with a query about roads in the U.S.? OK, that instance is a little far fetched, however the level stands: most of us don’t take into consideration reaching out to an organ of the federal authorities to have our questions answered, and definitely not a quarter of those that drive (and even a quarter of a p.c, we’d think about).

So from this, we’d say we are able to not less than glean that the FAA has executed a fairly good job letting individuals know that they’re round, and completely happy to speak.

So How Well Is the FAA Doing?

So-so, based on you:

It looks as if the key phrase on this query is “public.”

The solutions above appear to point that respondents—i.e., drone pilots—interact with the FAA usually, and know that the FAA is a go-to location for details about how and the place to fly.

But do the similar pilots suppose the FAA is doing a good job informing the common public about these points that the majority concern drone pilots? Not a lot, is what we take away from this reply.

One respondent wrote:

There must be a discover inside each drone offered that directs individuals to the FAA web site. Some of the data is there, however it isn’t as apparent as one would anticipate or hope.

Love that concept!

The similar so-so feeling additionally appeared to use to this query on how properly the FAA is doing with efforts to combine drones into the nationwide airspace:

This isn’t too stunning. And, to be truthful to the FAA, this isn’t fully as much as them, but in addition includes congress and different stakeholders.

When you contemplate the White House’s new pilot packages that may discover sharing airspace authority between the FAA and native entities, and different initiatives in the works like LAANC, the FAA is for higher or worse not all the time in a place to steer the cost with regards to integration.

But they’re actually going to take the brunt of frustration when persons are requested how integration goes. Even nonetheless, given how Sisyphean (which means, two steps ahead, one again) the integration effort seems at occasions, 6 out of 10 is definitely not so dangerous.

Regarding progress that’s been made, like the on the spot airspace authorizations supplied by LAANC, one respondent commented:

LAANC is a nice begin however the roll-out is excruciatingly lengthy. Simple airspace waivers take perpetually to course of. There is low confidence that a system like LAANC will ever come to an space reminiscent of ours (higher NYC space).

But then we had individuals who felt like this:

It is a enormous endeavor and I imagine they’re doing a good job.

Hear hear.

I believe most of us would agree on this—not solely is the venture of integrating drones into nationwide airspace a enormous endeavor, however it’s one thing that we’d be intimidated to tackle ourselves.

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And that’s all of us. As you’ll be able to see, it was a brief survey, however fairly revealing.

Here are our principal takeaways from this survey:

• Drone pilots—business and hobbyists alike—are partaking with the FAA in a large manner. They’re visiting the FAA’s web site, studying FAA supplies, and contacting the FAA.
• Drone pilots suppose extra may very well be executed to teach the public about nationwide airspace, and to get drones built-in into it. These two issues are intertwined, in that the integration effort is a legislative one, and laws is, by definition, tied to public opinion and notion.

We have a lengthy technique to go, however we’re on this journey collectively. Here’s to pushing the drone trade ahead in partnership with the FAA, one step at a time.