[LINK] Amazon Prime Air

[Ivan Trundle]

On 3 Dec 2013, at 5:51 am, stephen at melbpc.org.au wrote:

> A: The FAA is actively working on rules and an approach for unmanned aerial 
> vehicles that will prioritize public safety. Safety will be our top 
> priority, and our vehicles will be built with multiple redundancies and 
> designed to commercial aviation standards.

Of course they will say this. The FAA *are* indeed looking at registered and certified drones working in line of sight of the licenced operator (negating must of the marketing hype currently pushed by Amazon and others), working less than 400 feet above the ground, only during good daylight conditions, inside Class G controlled airspace, under 2 kg, and more than 5 miles from any airport or aviation centre. 

Show me a UPS van or a postie’s bike that has to wade through these regulations and restrictions to deliver a payload of what will have to be less than 500 grams.

Working in aviation, I can say with a degree of confidence that it ain’t just regulatory restrictions that will need modifying, or building multiple redundancies to assure aviation safety authorities that systems will not fail.

However, once I see a delivery drone successfully flying in even moderate winds with the chance of rain, hail, or even just a sunset, and over a crowd of people walking down the street with vehicular traffic passing by, and without someone simply nabbing the device and making off with it - then I might be forced to eat my words. 

There are many types and classes of UAVs, and there is too much conflation of UAV aircraft capabilities with hobbyist aerial vehicles for the general public to understand the limitations of (and differences between) each.

Near-misses between UAVs and passenger jets is bad enough (Perth, 2010), but UAVs in a street environment is just a nightmare waiting to happen.

iT