AUVSI Finds FAA Has Issued Over 4,000 Part 107 Waivers for Commercial UAS Written 22 April 2020

DroneDJ reports that the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) has counted up the number of Part 107 waivers that have been issued by the FAA since the implementation of the Part 107 rules on commercial UAS in 2016, “finding just over 4,000 cases, and some interesting trends.” Under Part 107, commercial UAVs under 55 pounds cannot exceed 400 feet in elevation or fly over people, at night, or beyond visual line of sight. AUVSI found that close to 95 percent of the Part 107 waivers were for night operation, while “the next biggest category was an allowance to fly over people, with 125 granted.” Flying beyond line of sight is the reason behind about half of the Part 107 waiver approvals, as is operating multiple UAVs at once. This report comes as the COVID-19 pandemic “is presenting ever more use cases for drones: such as monitoring crowd sizes and issuing public alerts.”
Full Story (DroneDJ)