FAA Passes 1,000 Exemption Mark
Today, the Federal Aviation Administration announced it has surpassed 1,000 approved applications to fly unmanned aircraft commercially under a Section 333 exemption.
Section 333 is part of the 2012 FAA Modernization and Reform Act, and it allows the agency to determine a system’s airworthiness for commercial operations in the National Airspace System outside of the current lack of a formal ruling on small unmanned aircraft.
In March, the FAA started issuing blanket certificates of authorization to entities that gained an exemption, allowing flights of the platforms anywhere below 200 feet outside of restricted airspace. In April, the FAA started issuing exemptions similar to past approved flights through a summary grant process, which expedited the agency’s decision making. The FAA has received more that 2,300 exemption applications.
AUVSI recently performed an analysis of the first 500 exemptions, which is available at http://auvsi.org/resources/section333report.
