Non-Commercial Drones No Longer Need To Be Registered With The FAA

Back in 2015, the FAA introduced a ruling which required drone owners to register their drones with the agency. Given that some drone owners in the past have been quite a nuisance with their drones by flying it into restricted airspace or onto other people’s property, this registration basically made drone owners more accountable for their actions.

However it seems that non-commercial drones will no longer need to be registered with the FAA, or at least that’s according to a recent ruling by a federal court in Washington D.C. This ruling was handed down following a successful lawsuit by John Taylor, a model aircraft enthusiast who wasn’t too pleased with the drone registration requirement.

According to the court’s ruling, the FAA apparently violated a law passed by Congress in 2012 which prohibited the agency from passing any rules on the operation of model aircrafts, which is apparently what drones are classified as. This means that the ruling that was enacted by the FAA wasn’t legal to begin with.

However interestingly enough, not all drone owners are happy with this ruling. DJI is one of them and speaking to Recode, DJI’s head of policy Brendan Schulman said, “The FAA’s innovative approach to drone registration was very reasonable, and registration provides for accountability and education to drone pilots. I expect the legal issue that impedes this program will be addressed by cooperative work between the industry and policymakers.”

Tyler Lee
Categories: Robots
Tags: Drones, faa, Legal