aircraft.
“The signal we’re sending today is that when you’re in the national airspace, it’s a very serious matter,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said during a Monday announcement.
The registration is an attempt to track rogue drones the government said are increasingly posing a threat to aviation safety.
The Washington Post reports that the decision to compel drone owners to register their aircraft represents a policy shift by the President Barack Obama’s administration and a tacit admission by the Federal Aviation Administration that it has been unable to safely integrate the popular remote-controlled drones and quad copters into the national airspace.
U.S. officials say they still need to sort out the basic details of the registration system — which they hope to set up within two months — but concluded that they had to take swift action to cope with a surge in sales of inexpensive, simple-to-fly drones they said are interfering with regular air traffic. American hobbyists are projected to buy about 700,000 drones this year, a 63 percent increase from 2014.
Pilots of passenger planes and other aircraft are reporting more than 100 sightings or close calls with drones a month, according to the FAA. Such incidents were almost unheard of prior to last year, but have escalated quickly amid the boom in the consumer drone market.
Under FAA guidelines, drone owners are not supposed fly their aircraft above 400 feet or within five miles of an airport without permission. But the rules are widely flouted, and officials have been largely powerless to find offenders.
Requiring drones to be registered will be of limited use for investigators unless the remote-controlled aircraft crash and a registration number can be found. Most drones are too small to appear on radar and do not carry transponders to broadcast their locations. Regulators hope that forcing owners to register their drones with the government will at least make them think twice about their responsibility to fly safely and the possibility that they could be held accountable for an accident.
As officials envision the system, new drone owners would have to register their purchases online and confirm that they have familiarized themselves with basic guidelines for where drones can fly and under what conditions.
