FAA Wants to Speed Up the Approval Process for Commercial Drones

(Source: Business Insider)  

The Federal Aviation Administration is seeking ways to speed up the approval process for commercial drone operations, but its efforts have been hindered by its lack of authority to review multiple applications on a group basis, the FAA chief said on Tuesday.

FAA Administrator Michael Huerta told a U.S. House aviation subcommittee that the agency could better address a backlog of 450 requests from companies seeking exemptions to use commercial drones if it could approve a class of applications that have similar circumstances.

The FAA recently proposed new regulations that would lift the current ban on most commercial drone flights, but the final rule-making could take anywhere from nine months to three years to finalize. During that period, companies can continue to apply for exemptions to use drones under strict rules.

The FAA has received about 450 exemption requests, Huerta said. But online government records show that only 28 companies have been granted exemptions so far.

“The agency has very limited ability to grant blanket exemptions to whole classes of users. So what that means is that we have to evaluate each application on its own individual merit,” Huerta told the hearing.

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