UAV Applications and problems

I believe that Unmanned Aerial Systems, or UAS as the new popular name for the remotely flown aircraft are now called, are going to be one of the biggest advances in so many areas of the economy in the next couple of decade. I have spent a lot of time studying, learning and dreaming about what this new technology will be able to do in the near future. I have read every article I can find on them, I have attended trade shows, I have bought books on them, I have even taken a free Massive Open Online Course from Embry Riddle University on the subject. Make no mistake, the drones are coming.

Well, let me back up a little, there have been remotely controlled aircraft since the 1920's, with the technology actually coming from Tesla in the 1890's.(RCflightline,2016) The only difference is now that the technology has gotten to the point that the once small aircraft can be scaled up to something that could cause a major conflict with a manned aircraft. The response from the FAA has been quick and very heavy handed. In December of last year, they put up a website that if you were going to fly ANY unmanned aircraft between .55 lbs and 55 lbs you had to register yourself and were given a number that you had to in someway mark on your drone that you were using for personal reasons. Any aircraft that was over the 55 lbs or was going to be used for commercial purposes, had to go through the whole process to become an N-registered aircraft just like a cessna or piper airplane. (FAA 2016)I was one of the first people to sign up for this because like I said, I know that this is going to be a big thing and I want to be in on the ground floor. With signing up for the website and giving them your information, you are told repeatedly that the limitations on you are that you are not to fly above 400 ft AGL, you are not to fly within 4 miles of an airport without contacting that airport, and you can not fly the aircraft out of your line of sight. All of these requirements will most definitely make it into the final rule.

I do believe that they will find a way to bring UAS into the Airspace system, it has just become too much of a force for the FAA to ignore. The only thing stopping the sky from being darkened by so many drones flying around is the regulation. But even with strict limitations on them, you see things like one landing on the white house lawn, drones being used for photography and everything else that is prohibited but still capable of being done. When the FAA realizes that they can not keep fighting this technology, there are going to be so many problems in almost every aspect there can be. There will have to be all new privacy laws written, as well as insurance for having something happen to you or your property by a drone, and countless other problems that people haven't even thought of yet. The biggest problem is that historically we have been able to keep idiots out of the NAS, just by the fact that it is very difficult to get your pilots licence and not anybody can just fly an airplane. But with drones, anyone with $200 can buy something that weighs about 30 lbs, has a HD camera and with no training whatsoever, can start flying these things over the unsuspecting public.

The military has made drones if not the centerpiece a very big part of its strategy, the advantages behind it are that the commanders are not putting people in harms way to fight an enemy. They can also deploy a drone much faster and with a much smaller footprint than an aircraft that needs fuel, back up crew, mechanics, parts, and armaments. Not to mention the cost if a drone goes down is only a couple hundred thousand dollars, where an aircraft is hundreds of millions of dollars. As a consequence of having these cheaper and easier aircraft at their disposal, that don't put American lives at risk, we are seeing commanders more likely to deploy drones than manned aircraft. And while the UAS are more precise than the carpet bombing of World War II there is still the human element missing from making sure that it is the right time to take the shot.

There are so many jobs for people that are interested in the UAS that are available right now. I actually almost had a job with a company that did ice flow and whale counting work, almost 10 years ago. But just a quick search on Indeed.com brought up over 375 jobs, from flying, to designing to managing Unmanned systems, for companies like Northrup Grumman and Raython, which are probably mostly for militart applications, but also for aerial photography and many other jobs. And like I said, this is just the beginning, as the FAA gets their act together and makes some rules that will actually work, you are going to see so many new job opportunities open up.
http://www.indeed.com/q-Unmanned-Aerial-System-jobs.html

 RCFLlightline.com. (n.d.). History of Radio Control. Retrieved February 11, 2016, from https://rcflightline.com/rc-history/ 

Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). (2016, January 22). Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Registration. Retrieved from https://www.faa.gov/uas/registration/

Pilot Fatigue in the Cargo Industry

Limits on flight duty hours have been around since the 1940's when aircraft first gained the ability to stay aloft for significant periods of time.(Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) 2011) As airplanes get better and better at staying in the air longer and longer, the need for serious, science based rules on dealing with and preventing pilot fatigue have become more important. There were rules in place that addressed the duty times and required rest that airline pilots, but these rules, that were supposed to be the bare minimum, quickly became the norm for nearly every operator. This resulted in more fatigued pilots that made more mistakes, some with tragic consequences.

The new rules that were put together in response to the Colgan Air Crash in Buffalo in 2009. These rules improved on the previous rules by using the latest in Fatigue science and research. (FAA 2011) Some of the changes that the new rule made were that it changed the amount of available duty time depending on when the day started for the crew, their Flight Duty Period or FDP could be 9 hours up to 14 hours. (FAA 2011)
The new rules limit the amount of time that a pilot can be at the controls to 8 or 9 hours in one day, and mandates that they should have 10 hours of rest with at least 8 being available for rest. The new rules also increase the amount of time that the crew must be off in a 7 day period from 24 hours to 30 hours (FAA 2011) And lastly the rule states that pilots must be trained to be able to identify and mitigate fatigue that can degrade their abilities.

One major discrepancy that this major rule change had, was that it excluded all cargo carriers from having to comply with the new rules. The All Cargo carriers such as UPS and FEDEX are under the old rules that just required 10 hours of rest for every 14 hours on duty, with changes if the duty time ran over it was possible if the pilots were given an extended rest after the fact. (Carroll 2014) But the problem is these rules were made to be the bare minimum of rest that the pilots should get, but in the world of "always increasing Productivity" these bare minimums became the norm. I have flown 135 cargo and I can tell you that the rules were not sufficient to keep you from getting fatigued.

There are many reasons that the cargo companies are exempt from the new rules. The first and biggest being money. I remember when I was flying cargo, we talked about the new rules and I was told by a UPS rep that if they had to comply with the new rules it would cost every one of its nearly 400 domestic bases over $400,000 a year more to operate. Now I think that this number may be a bit overblown but the FAA concluded that it would cost the entire industry over $550 million to implement the new rules on cargo carriers (Carroll 2014) so this number could be close. Other reasons that could be that the Cargo carriers got out of the new rules is that there just isn't that many people that know about cargo carriers, because they work the back of the clock and don't have paying passengers that have congressmen on the airplane. 

I don't believe that cargo carriers should be exempt from the new duty rules, because of my own experience. It is a miracle that I didn't crash in the first two weeks of flying cargo, because you are just thrown into a new schedule that dictates when you need to sleep and where you will sleep, usually a cheap hotel, or crappy apartment, and that is very hard to just jump into. It took at least two weeks before I was acclimated to the schedule and was able to sleep when and where I was supposed to. And I was just flying a small single engine turboprop Caravan, not a large jet like the A300 that went down in Alabama, while I was flying cargo and after the rules came out that exempted cargo carriers. Those pilots were fatigued and even talked about how crazy it was that they weren't under the same rules, on the flight that they crashed and killed both of them! (Carroll 2014)

There would be some big changes on the landscape if the rule applied to cargo carriers, first there would be more pilot jobs because there would need to be more pilots to relieve the tired pilots. The carriers would have to be much better at scheduling crews and knowing the factors that could delay flights and cause pilots to go over duty times.   


Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). (2011). Flightcrew member duty and rest requirements(RIN 2120-AJ58). Retrieved from http://Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). (2011, December 21). final rule, flightcrew member duty and rest requirements. Retrieved from http://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/rulemaking/recently_published/media/2120-AJ58-FinalRule.pdf

Carroll, J. R. (2014, March 13). UPS pilots urge more rest for cargo crews. Retrieved from http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/03/13/ups-pilots-urge-more-rest-for-cargo-crews/6402615/