The FAA needs to do more to improve its management of the safety risks of drones in the national airspace, according to a recent report (PDF) by the federal Government Accountability Office. The report said the FAA needs to collect better data on drone safety, and also needs to focus on risk management. “FAA officials told us that they are aware that the agency’s data on potential unsafe use of small UAS have limitations,” says the report, though the agency said it is “making efforts” to improve the quality of information. The FAA officials said small drones are often not recorded by radar, and it’s difficult for pilots to identify them definitively. “Such data limitations impede the agency’s ability to effectively assess the safety of small UAS operations,” according to the report.
Since 2014, pilots and others have reported to the FAA more than 6,000 sightings of UAS, often flying near manned aircraft or airports, but FAA officials told GAO they cannot verify that small UAS were involved in most of the sightings. Officials explained that small UAS are often difficult for pilots to identify definitively, and typically are not picked up by radar. The GAO found the FAA’s drone activities regularly followed only two of their own five key principles for safety-risk policies — (1) defining appropriate roles and responsibilities for safety risk management and (2) describing the aviation system under consideration. FAA partially followed the other three principles: (1) analyzing and assessing safety risks, (2) implementing controls to mitigate the risks and (3) monitoring the effectiveness of the controls and adjusting them as needed. The GAO recommended that the FAA should establish a mechanism to ensure that their management of small UAS safety risks follows all applicable principles and requirements in the agency’s policies. The FAA agreed with GAO’s recommendation.
