Drone Wars: Who Owns The Air?

from NPR

There are lots of entrepreneurs who would love to fly drones — tiny unmanned aircraft — all over the country. They dream of drones delivering packages and taking photos, but there’s a battle in the courts right now standing in their way. The battle is about whether it’s legal for drones to take to the sky.

The question at the core of the battle: who owns the air?

It’s a question that goes back to the middle ages, to a Latin phrase that translates to “he owns the soil owns up to the heavens.” In England, this phrase was the law of the land for centuries, and it worked well when disputes involved simple things like overhanging tree branches and lopsided buildings.

But once hot air balloons and airplanes came into the picture, things got a lot more complicated. In 1926, Congress created what we now call the FAA, and declared that the air above 500 feet is the public domain. But what about the air below that?

Thomas Causby was a chicken farmer in North Carolina who lived near a tiny airport. During World War II, the army took over the airport, and suddenly big military planes were flying over Causby’s chicken coops all the time. The planes scared Causby’s chickens. They flew into the walls of the coop and they died.

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