National Drone Safety Awareness Week: What it is and Why it Matters

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is calling attention to drone safety during National Drone Safety Awareness Week November 4-10, 2019.

“National Drone Safety Awareness Week will help educate the public about drone safety by highlighting how key sectors of the drone community are engaging with the public and spreading awareness throughout the U.S.,” says the FAA.  “During this week, the FAA will promote your safety stories, successes, events and educational programs.”

While experienced drone pilots may not think they need a designated week for drone safety, they should think again.  The FAA’s newest effort is a concrete program framework to help the drone industry deal with one of the most important issues that they face: public perception.

In addition to regulators – including those at the FAA – referring to drone operators as “clueless, careless, or criminal,” the public isn’t sure that drones are worth the risk.  They’ve heard more about drones being used to disrupt flights at Heathrow or perform terrorist acts than they have about the thousands of critical and lifesaving applications of drones: medical delivery, search and rescue, protection of first responders, firefighting, and more.

This is a well documented issue for the drone industry: research published by PwC this June indicated that less than one third of respondents in the U.K. felt positive about drone technology.  The results of that poor perception are clear: the ever proliferating local ordinances and laws designed to prohibit drone flight in communities.  The fight to change that public perception is up to the drone industry – and with National Drone Safety Awareness Week, the FAA is lending a hand.   Here are DRONELIFE, we’ll commit to providing content that will match the focus areas – and we ask all of you to see what you can do at your companies to participate.

Here’s how it works, from the FAA release:

Focus Areas

Each day, we’ll focus on targeted audiences:

• Monday: Public Safety and Security
• Tuesday: Business – Photography, Real Estate, Insurance
• Wednesday: Business – Infrastructure and Agriculture
• Thursday: Business – Commercial and Medical Package Delivery
• Friday: Education and STEM
• Saturday and Sunday: Recreational Flyers

Get Started Today

• Check out the Stakeholder Playbook for ideas and inspiration.
• Download the National Drone Safety Awareness Week graphics and apply them to your event materials.
• Visit the Voluntary Tracking Tool (VTT) on the Unmanned Aircraft Safety Team (UAST) website to log your planned events.
• Tag your social media stories with #DroneWeek to let us know you’re participating in National Drone Safety Awareness Week.

For additional information, visit faa.gov/go/DroneWeek or email DroneSafetyWeek@faa.gov