On May 12th representatives of FAA’s Unmanned Aircraft Program Office (UAPO) attended the Joe Nall fly-in at the Triple Tree Aerodrome and met with the attendees at the AMA annual meeting. For the most part they appeared very impressed with the professional manner in which the event was conducted and the level of safety achieved at the various venues and concurrent MA operations.
Thursday evening the FAA representatives provided a briefing on the status of the sUAS rulemaking process similar to the briefing presented during the AMA Expo in January. The information was very much the same and the sUAS rulemaking continues to be a work in progress. In an update on the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) timeline it was announced that the NPRM release date has slipped to late Fall 2011. The previously projected date of September 1st has now moved to late November or early December. Optimistically the NPRM release could come before Thanksgiving, but if not, it would not be surprising to see the date slip into the New Year.
-Rich Hanson, AMA Government Relations and Regulatory Affairs Representative