Let’s say you had an issue while on a recent drone flight. Maybe you were a mission and a manned aircraft dipped below 400 feet. Maybe the drone had a flyaway. What to do? Well, the FAA is encouraging you to report it, using an anonymous and largely non-punitive system.
The Aviation Safety Reporting System is new to us. And that’s not surprising, because it has only just opened its door to reporting on drone incidents. But it’s a good tool to access when necessary, as it helps give regulators and others a more complete picture of incidents involving safety that it would otherwise not even know had happened. If, for example, a particular model of drone – or even a particular location with heavy interference – was found to be associated with a number of flyaways, an identifiable pattern would emerge that could lead to the situation being remedied.
So reporting safety issues makes sense – and gives the FAA a much bigger picture of what’s happening in the…
