With a rise in drone popularity, the FAA expects collisions with planes to increase. That hasn’t happened yet at Westover Air Reserve Base in Chicopee, Mass.
Lieutenant Colonel James Bishop says the recently updated FAA regulations are not about security, but about safety. Namely all drones above a certain weight must be registered, and drones shouldn’t be flown within five miles of an airport, unless the flight tower is contacted first.
“If we know where you are, we can keep everybody safe,” Bishop says.
Major Emily Koziol has logged 3000 hours, flying Westover’s C-5 cargo planes. But the new drone her father got her for Christmas, she’s flown it all of 30 minutes.
“That actually goes into the ‘danger’ part. Honestly,” Koziol says with a laugh. “You have somebody that just got it, doesn’t know the dangers of it, has no idea what it can do, how high it can go, how fast it can go, where it’s going to go.”
And they can fly it right into the path of an aircraft pretty easily, Koziol says.
Still, at this point, the FAA says birds flying into planes are much more of a risk.