By DRONELIFE Features Editor Jim Magill
DroneUp, one in every of the most important drone delivery corporations within the U.S., will likely expand its operations as a direct results of the passage of the bill to reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration, Anthony Vittone, the corporate’s COO said in an interview.
“I believe the authorization bill might be one in every of the largest things to assist the advancement of drones into the national airspace, possibly even larger than Part 107,” Vittone said.
“What this whole authorization bill goes to do is allow us all, especially drug delivery corporations, to speed up our operations, speed up the scalability,” he said. “At once, we operate 34 operations for Walmart in six different states. And, this provides a path forward for us to scale those operations and to expand this program.”
He said the drone delivery industry as a complete — including delivery service providers, retailers and customers — has been waiting for the passage of the laws to see how the industry would develop over the following several years.
The reauthorization bill, which Congress passed on a bipartisan basis and which was signed into law by President Biden earlier this month, comprises quite a few provisions designed to encourage the expansion of the industrial drone industry. Among the many bill’s most important drone-related provisions is a piece that mandates the FAA to develop a final rule for the operation of drones beyond the visual line of sight (BVLOS) inside 20 months.
Vittone said that provision of the bill “really gives the entire industry a likelihood to speed up their BVLOS operations in a much quicker and more scalable way.”
Along with the BVLOS provisions, Vittone pointed to several other parts of the bill which are of particular interest to corporations that supply retail drone delivery service, including sections that cover noise and the event of a programmatic-level approach toward environmental assessments.
One among the largest hindrances slowing the rapid development of a drone-delivery ecosystem has been the necessity for system developers to conduct individual environmental assessments for every latest project, he said.
For instance, DroneUp, which focuses much of its drone delivery operations within the Dallas/Fort Price area, is currently working on an environmental assessment for a project in Dallas. “It’s taking on a yr, it’s very expensive, and it’s all to do an assessment on a drone that operates with battery power and has less noise than a UPS truck. So, it’s a whole lot of effort for not a whole lot of return in our opinion.”
Multiplied across the complete drone delivery industry, with each retailer having to repeat that very same study in every metro across the country, “there’s no way that that works,” Vittone said.
One other way wherein the reauthorization laws will help speed the expansion of the retail delivery industry is in its call for the FAA to revise its guidelines for drone transportation of hazardous materials. Under current regulations, service providers comparable to DroneUp, which carry retail items from drug stores to the buyer, are prohibited from carrying common, on a regular basis items, comparable to lipstick and hairspray because they’re designated by the FAA as being hazardous materials.
“Lighter fluid will probably all the time be excluded, but I can carry lipstick, I can carry hairspray, I can carry mouthwash,” Vittone said.
“This law does an awesome deal in helping to speed up the drone industry as a complete and delivery specifically,” he said. “It has given a whole lot of confidence, I believe, to customers, to investors, to all of different people involved within the drone industry to assist show that drones are being integrated into the national airspace, and that this can be a program that the federal government is serious about.”
Wing CEO express support for brand spanking new law
The CEO of one other major player within the drone delivery space also expressed his enthusiasm for the passage of the brand new law.
“Today marks a major milestone along this path because the president has signed into law the FAA reauthorization bill following overwhelming bipartisan support in Congress,” Adam Woodworth, CEO of Alphabet’s Wing, said in a blog post following the passage of the bill.
“At Wing, we’re encouraged by what we see within the law’s final language and are excited to work with the FAA on implementation of the law’s provisions over the months to come back.”
Woodworth, who had testified on the usprovisions of the bill before the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee’s subcommittee on Aviation last yr, said under the present regulatory regime, drone operators were uncertain as to the “test we needed to pass” to acquire the regulatory approvals needed to expand operations and adopt innovations.
“The FAA reauthorization attempts to repair a few of these issues and I’m encouraged to see a policy framework now set by Congress in law to permit a brand new predictable and pragmatic framework for regulating uncrewed aviation,” he wrote.