FAA’s Deputy Administrator Outlines Timeline for BVLOS Rulemaking and Plans for Drone and AAM Integration into National Airspace
By DRONELIFE Features Editor Jim Magill
A high-ranking FAA official on Tuesday promised that the agency is on track to meet the scheduled timeline for issuing a final beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) rule by January, 2026, as set forth by Congress.
In remarks Tuesday at the FAA Drone and AAM symposium in Baltimore, Deputy Administrator Katie Thomson said the agency plans to publish BVLOS Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) by the end of 2024. Thomson also outlined the agency’s ambitious agenda for integrating drones and advanced air mobility (AAM) technology into the national airspace system (NAS) within the next several years.
The NPRM is the first step toward the issuance of a final BVLOS rule, which Congress mandated the agency to approve within 20 months, as part of the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024, which was passed in May.
“This rulemaking aims to ensure that we can normalize operations in the NAS and ensure that all operators big and small, can provide safe and efficient operations and services where traditional air traffic control services are not provided,” she said.
“When it comes to drones and advanced air mobility, the future is now. We’ve been talking about integrating drones into the national airspace system for more than a decade now. And at times, the pace of progress has been frustratingly slow. But today, I’m happy to say that the full-scale integration of drones is clearly within reach.”
In a recent statement, the FAA pointed to the work of the Beyond Visual Line of Sight Aviation Rulemaking Committee (ARC), which issued its report in March 2022. Based on the work of the ARC “the FAA designed the NPRM to allow operations to scale as the industry continues to grow,” the statement says.
Thomson said the FAA is working to ensure maximum flexibility within the existing regulations to integrate both drones and AAM technology into the NAS.
“We’re using our proven safety-first, data-driven, process-oriented and methodical approach to certify new aircraft and new types of operations to ensure that we remain the safest aerospace system in the world,” she said. “We are evaluating infrastructure, cybersecurity and data requirements, as well as the effects of noise and other environmental considerations to support both drone and AAM operations.”
She said that UAVs are already being put to use on a commercial basis in places such as the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex area, where “drones are delivering small grocery and pharmacy items in as little as 30 minutes.” She noted that the FAA is working in collaboration with the drone industry to support the industry-led development of “validation standards and evaluating the maturation of UAS traffic management or UTM services in a real-world environment.”
Thomson said the FAA is harmonizing the BVLOS rulemaking process with the 2209 Rule, which addresses drone operations near critical infrastructure such as energy production and distribution facilities; oil refineries and chemical facilities; and amusement parks.
Introducing AAM into national airspace
In its efforts to meet its goal of integrating AAM operations into the national airspace within the next five years or so, the FAA is again emphasizing its collaboration with industry players. “Collectively, we must ensure that the new generation of electric, vertical takeoff and landing and other emerging aircraft maintain the high level of safety of today’s civil aviation and that all of us are working to make that happen,” Thomson said.
The agency expects to have its AAM rulemaking finalized by late October or early November.
In addition, Thomson said the FAA is collaborating with more than a dozen other federal agencies on a national AAM strategy. “For those of you who are involved in some of the early drone integration work, I think you can appreciate that this time around, we’re trying to be much better organized across the federal government,” she said.
Over the past year or so, the agency has taken a number of steps toward reaching its AAM integration goals. “We’ve issued version 2.0 of the Urban Air Mobility concept of operations, an updated blueprint that offers a framework of operations and anticipated levels of maturity,” Thomson said.
“Last summer, right around the time of this this convening, we proposed a comprehensive rule for training and certifying AAM pilots, which we know as the powered-lift proposed SFAR.”
That rule is expected to be pivotal the introduction of AAM, by providing certainty to pilots and the industry as to FAA’s requirements and expectations for operating AAM aircraft, “so that they can take those into consideration as they work to certify their aircraft.” The FAA expects to provide a type certificate for the first AAM aircraft before the end of 2025.
“To further pave the way, we released an implementation plan detailing the steps that the FAA and others will need to take to safely integrate advanced air mobility in the near term. And we put together a cross-functional FAA team that we call Innovate 2028, which aims to establish an operational AAM ecosystem at one or more key sites in the NAS by 2028.”
The FAA is also working in other ways to integrate AAM operations into the NAS, researching AAM concepts and considering possible further rulemakings for scheduled and on-demand operations that may have a remote pilot or operate autonomously under certain conditions, she said.
Citing the ongoing 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, Thomson pointed toward the gains that FAA hopes to achieve in the adoption of drone and AAM technology in the near future.
“In another four years, we will hold another Olympics in Los Angeles. I hope that in these games rather than being a promising concept, drones will be in widespread use, as well electric taxis to transport athletes, officials and spectators safely from venue to venue,” she said.
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Jim Magill is a Houston-based writer with almost a quarter-century of experience covering technical and economic developments in the oil and gas industry. After retiring in December 2019 as a senior editor with S&P Global Platts, Jim began writing about emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, robots and drones, and the ways in which they’re contributing to our society. In addition to DroneLife, Jim is a contributor to Forbes.com and his work has appeared in the Houston Chronicle, U.S. News & World Report, and Unmanned Systems, a publication of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International.
