The growing consumer drone industry is still in its emergent years, but Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) chief Michael Huerta says the agency already has regulations in place to ensure safety in the skies.
Huerta says the agency already has rules that prohibit operators of personal drones from flying into airports and soaring over 400 feet in the air. However, the lack of education and lenient enforcement of these rules have allowed drone operators to keep on breaking them. A report released by the agency says pilots report seeing drones flying dangerously close to large aircraft around 25 times per month, with some flying as high as 2,000 feet in the air. Huerta says the rules were set in place after an increased number of incidents were reported since February, with 25 cases where the pilots were forced to change their course.
"The thing that I am most concerned about is doing everything we can to avoid conflicts between aircraft - whether they're drones or commercial airliners," Huerta tells ABC News. "If you're using an unmanned aircraft, you need to stay away from an airport, you need to stay below 400 feet and you need to maintain line of sight."
The rules are in line with an aviation principle called "see and avoid," where pilots exert all effort to see everything within the vicinity of the aircraft and take action to avoid whatever is hovering too close to prevent collision. At the same time, Huerta says he recognizes the potential of the use of drones in business and in surveillance, and understands why drone advocates are calling for the free and open use of unmanned drones.
"We have a plan for a staged and thoughtful integration of unmanned aircraft where we look at lower risk uses first, and then gradually work to others," Huerta tells CNN.
A major challenge for the FAA is to spread awareness about the existence of the rules. Huerta says the agency has been partnering with drone clubs and associations such as the Model Aeronautics Association to educate flyers of personal drones, who are most likely not licensed pilots, about the dangers of flying next to larger aircraft.
"(A) big part of what we're doing is educating people," Huerta says. "These are very high performance aircraft, and they are difficult to see and this is one of the big challenges, and so that's why the rules require that people stay away from airports."
Aside from the current rules, the FAA is expected to craft additional rules that take into account the regulation of drones weighing lower than 55 pounds, as well as aircraft certification and the operator's qualifications. The FAA is also working on a set of rules covering commercial drones, such as the delivery drones being tested by websites such as Amazon and Google.
