Thursday, December 3, 2015

FAA Sends UAS Registration Rule to OMB

Tuesday the OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) announced that it had received a proposed interim final rule (IFR) from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) concerning UAS Registration. This is almost certainly the rule that has been under public discussion for the last month or so.

The FAA is probably using the December 31st, 2015 deadline to “develop and implement operational and certification requirements for the operation of public unmanned aircraft systems in the national airspace system” found in §334(b) of the FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012 (PL 112-95).

Unfortunately, if the published work of the ‘Drone Task Force’ is any indication of the contents and intent of this IFR, then the FAA is completely disregarding the provisions of §336 of the same bill which specifically states that the FAA may not “promulgate any rule or regulation regarding a model aircraft, or an aircraft being developed as a model aircraft”. A key component of the definition of ‘model aircraft’ is that it includes UAS that are “flown for hobby or recreational purposes” {§336(c)(3)}.

It will be interesting to see how long OIRA sits on this rulemaking.


BTW: Readers of this blog will notice that this post comes a day later than normal. I try to make these posts the day after the regulation is submitted to OIRA. Unfortunately, OIRA is no longer able to get these posted to its web site by the next morning. I know that it is the holiday season so that may explain why it takes an additional day to get two rulemakings posted to their site.

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