# Exploring the Evolving FAA Regulations for BVLOS Drone Ops

- Event: Xpress ’23
- Published: July 4, 2023
- Length: 13:35
- Watch: https://nestgen.org/library/watch/6MzWCrVY-vw/

> The transcript of a recorded NestGen session, for reading or for use with an AI tool. It comes from the video's
> captions; automatic captions can mishear names and terms.

## About this session

This interview is about the evolving regulations of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) drone operations.

The conversation delves into the difficulties the FAA faces in keeping pace with the swift advancement of drone technology. The importance of industry collaboration and the necessity for a uniform and standardized approach to drone regulation are highlighted.

The interview also explores the FAA's collaboration with international aviation regulatory bodies to ensure a globally consistent approach to drone regulation. Privacy concerns related to drones, the potential rise of aerial paparazzi, and the significance of fostering a safety culture within the drone community are also discussed.

## Transcript

**[0:00]** [Music] [Applause] [Music] welcome welcome everyone um everyone here in the exhibit all if you could if you're here and you'd like to hear a fascinating FAA interview please head on over here to Booth 3909 uh FlytNow Express we are we are here NestGen Express we're here with Kevin Morris he is the FAA drone guy and and that's just really fun um because we don't get to talk to the FAA that often that's not true we get to talk to him all the time they are so involved with what we're doing and I'm just honored to be here to ask some questions and be here live with you guys here this is gonna be a lot of fun so if you're ready to get going let's do this hey let's do this we're day one of exponential I'm more than happy this is going to be a great conversation this is gonna be a good time all right let's see let's get this going let's see I I got a couple good questions okay so with drones becoming more autonomous will we see an increase in Rogue Sky Pirates stealing our Amazon packages and will at least be

**[1:01]** cooler than the seafaring version so if I had a crystal ball that might be able to tell me but one of the things you do when you get hired at the FAA they take away your crystal ball so I certainly can't forecast are there going to be issues with uh I don't want to say air piracy because that means something very very different the FAA but uh let's just term it security how do we keep everything secure and that's definitely some of the things that we're looking at so you look at some of the the work that the fa has done not only just it shows that the technological aspects we have remote ID which I know we're going to talk about uh that's coming up here very shortly but we also do a lot of work with our local law enforcement agencies uh we we fully recognize that the fa that we don't have a safety inspector standing on every driveway monitoring everything is happening you know just like law enforcement can't have a police officer in every quarter but with working with their law enforcement Partners through our law enforcement assistance program we have established a very solid line of communication with those agencies so that we can deal with these instances of illegal drone operations what do we want the police to

**[2:05]** do if there's a legal drone operation how do police want us to help them investigate that so all this type of community goes on to maybe perhaps stop the pirate in the sky if you will stealing your Amazon delivery jobs yeah but that you know Safety and Security is something that's always at the Forefront of everything that we do absolutely now I couldn't agree that more so I'm also an FAA safety team drill throw and we go around and we we love extolling the virtues of everything that's happening within the Drone industry from the fa perspective so absolutely I'm also just love working with the fa it's a lot of fun so question number two so some critics there may be some critics here at this conference maybe not there's no credit today here um weird crystal ball question um so they've argued that the current regulatory framework is too rigid and inflexible to keep Pace with the rapid development of dronterbox solutions BD loss and some of the more Innovative out there technology

**[3:06]** that is becoming more to the Forefront of this industry how do you respond to this criticism sure I think it's a it's a fair Christian criticism to say that um as a regulatory agency it's challenging for us to keep up with the pacing Innovation that we see in the Drone World um we're we're an agency that's built on traditional aircraft and it you do not see that type of evolution of traditional aircraft and at the pace you see in drones I mean here we are at AVS eyes exponential uh you've probably been a few times I've been a few times just what you see on the floor here it is nowhere what we saw a few years ago it's it's pretty so the challenge to us and it's a fair criticism in that it's a challenge for the FAA to keep up um one of the things I think that you see we do a lot more of now is collaboration with the industry isn't that folks like yourself with our drill Pro program not only that but when we look at regulations so for example BB laws that's the big topic conversation lately what are we going to get Beyond visualize that operation we form that BB loss

**[4:08]** uh Aviation rulemaking committee not too long ago which is a huge partnership between the FAA and the industry to come up with okay how do we all see this working and then we put that into a final report which is issued just about a year ago and we take that into consideration when we start the rule making process now I'm not saying we've started rulemaking process you can't quote me on that I like my job I do want to work tomorrow morning but when we do any rulemaking we base that off of a lot of Aviation rulemaking committees which is to say we value Industries input so they tell us what's not worked they tell us how they like to see it work and then we look at incorporating that it's important to remember when we're talking about keeping up with industry the United States airspace system it's the most complex on the entire planet it's also the safest on the entire planet I was in a panel session the other day and I asked about how many people flew here to Denver and you can imagine 70 75 percent of people reset is that how many were afraid that they wouldn't make it and nobody

**[5:11]** raise their hand well there's one guy next week because this flight was delayed but that didn't really count but nobody raised their head um that's a testament to that Legacy of how things work the reason you hop on an airplane and the only thing you're really concerned about is what movies they have to show kind of is because of the collaboration between industry and the fa to make it safe so when we look at drones what they're capable of doing we want to enable that type of operation we realize going back to BB loss part 107 prohibits it unless you have a waiver that's not a scalable repeatable right way to right so we we get that piece of it so the trick is making it work in that complex airspace system that we had I think it's all fair and thank you for responding to the criticism that way it I think that that they don't completely realize that everyone all the listeners they don't politely realize that just how much of a challenge it really is here in the U.S national Air Base system so going outside of the U.S just for a second so how

**[6:11]** does the FAA work with other International Aviation regulatory bodies to ensure that and and I would like your thoughts on this to ensure that there's a consistent and standardized approach to regulator to regulating specifically uh jointerbox Solutions BB loss aircraft and other autonomous aircraft right so if this almost goes back to some of the criticizing we hear right you hear of operations uh in Africa Rwanda zipline things like that they're doing this and people look and say well why are we doing this we should be doing this and we agree we should be doing this here but the challenge is significantly different for for a lot of different reasons part of that challenge we feel we can overcome by regularly meeting with other Regulators from Europe from Asia Africa for even to our neighbors to the north and Canada South and Mexico to make sure that relatively speaking because again we're all a little bit different in how we manage our airspace how we can do this together so that something that is authorized let's say to operate in Europe would have to follow a very similar process to be authorized to operate here in the United

**[7:14]** States then I can show you that it's it's worked in the past we have foreign air carriers that fly into the U.S all the time the safety centers that they have to maintain are the same as the Safety Center as we expect our carriers to maintain so when they're flying into our country that's a result of that collaboration with our International Partners to make sure that not only are you comfortable with us coming into your country with our aircraft based on our safety standards but you could come into our country based on yours we're going to follow that same process more or less for drones to make sure that what you're capable of doing here whether it's a thrown in the box or whether something's happening in Rwanda for example withdrawals that that will scale to Europe you can scale to Canada scale of the US and as you can imagine it takes a lot of work a lot of meetings with a lot of talking but it's something that the FAA has excelled at in the past and I would expect us to continue and so a serious question um so with drones obviously I mean this is a massive conference we're here with 8 000 of our friends here and so this is gonna be a lot of fun um with oh oh there we

**[8:18]** go almost lost my question good thing I memorized oh interview's over oh everybody's like no no no I'll stay here this is a very important question that everyone wants to know so will we see an increase in Ariel Paparazzi hovering outside of our Windows especially especially mine obviously and can we train our cats to take them down uh I'm gonna settle the second half of your question can you ever train a cat to do anything I suppose I think it's pretty highly debatable I don't know I've had cats and they trained you I think that's how they work out but uh to the first party question uh people who really were getting a news privacy right yeah how are we going to manage privacy um from the FAA's perspective privacy is not something we're charged with enforcement oh right so we we're here for the certification the regulation the safety efficiency of the airspace uh but again that goes down to a public perception thing as well um I I was talking to somebody the other day I believe they might have been from uh drone up but we're talking about the perception

**[9:20]** of drills are for a lot of folks still they're flying above my backyard they're spying on me they're looking in my window type of thing right up until the point where they order something online and it's dropped off in their driveway in 10 minutes then drones become the greatest thing since fly spread so how do how do we bridge that Gap right how do we get people very very comfortable with drones so they stop seeing it as a wisest thing flying to oh hey cool looking airplane right that's that's the challenge so what we do in terms of working with drill Pros like yourself uh who belong to the community to try to help educate folks that you know what these are evil devices these are devices that are changing the future of Aviation and it's really really exciting I made a comparison the other day I love the show Hamilton the Broadway show Hamilton yeah fantastic show one of the songs talk about how lucky we are to be alive right now I feel the same way with drones and a how lucky we are to be alive at a time right now where we're seeing the Advent of a completely new era of Aviation that we all collectively will shape it's pretty exciting nice it

**[10:23]** reminds me a song Aladdin but the whole Amazing World The other thing see it is karaoke you didn't even know we were going to do that okay so the final question and this is on the the topic of challenges so what do you see is the biggest challenge facing the FAA terms of regulating autonomous aircraft and how do you plan to address these challenges in years to come right so one of the things I let people know is despite what folks might think we don't wake up in the morning dreaming of new rules to make that's not what motivates us that's not sure that's not what gets me up in the morning it doesn't keep me up at night in fact most people have talked to that have been involved with roommaking are like it's it's a process avoid it don't try don't get pulled into the team right uh but they're they're with really brilliant intelligent people at the FAA that work on rule Lake and things like that so what what I think of is is one of the challenges is how do we enable what we're seeing without overburdening with regulations and one of the key components of that is the collaborative safety effort okay so somebody had asked me earlier at the

**[11:27]** conference you know what's that what's what's my dream aspiration for what we see in the drill Community my answer to that was a safety culture all right so you look at traditional aircraft traditional Aviation been around over 100 years now at this point there is a safety culture that's woven into everything every pilot does from the pilot is God's Own airplane on his farm to the commercial airline pilot that brought most people here that that safety culture has woven in so my challenge seems to be how do we embed that safety culture into the drilled Community we have a lot of brilliant people in Industry flying drones and they're very interested in the safety because they get it they understand if we don't do this safely it's never going to go anywhere because unsaved acts require more regulation right we see that oh so how do we reach the unreachables how do we find people that maybe don't know that this podcast exists or that the fa has social media channels or even a website for that matter so what the challenge is reaching out to those pockets of the community establishing relationships with folks like yourself to help carry that

**[12:29]** safety message and build that safety culture that is ridiculously important and I do see that as a challenge right I mean you have people now that they will go online I mean there's over 300 000 commercial drone Pilots safety isn't really part of the test not really not at the not at the level where it needs to be but even if so passing a 60 question test going to Best Buy or Costco and getting a drone and registering it for five dollars doesn't make you a drone Pro does it make you a safety professional and so I would argue that you're absolutely correct that is a huge challenge how do we make that a reality so Kevin thank you so so much for being on the show today this has been a true pleasure uh apologize all mine this has been a great conversation I think it's been different I love it so this has been a highlight of my day more fantastic well you hear here folks uh they wake up every morning trying to think of new rules not true that's not true they do believe that uh they do believe that cats can be used potentially take down drones but they're also they can they're training us so uh thank you so much for joining us this is

**[13:30]** investgen Express and we will catch you on the next episode bye now