The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) recently made some Section 333 policy changes that may have slipped under some commercial pilots’ radars. Back in November, the FAA posted a document in the Federal Register that revoked closed-set drone operations over people for those operators who had previously been approved for this type of flight under Section 333 (Section 333 is the process by which the FAA granted commercial drone use exemptions before Part 107 was effective in August 2016). Founder of the Commercial Drone Alliance, Gretchen West, said, “Technically, [these operators are] operating without authority right now. And they probably don’t even know that because they weren’t directly given a notification by the FAA.” However, this does not necessarily mean the end of closed-set operations; if this blanket amendment does apply to you, you can contact the FAA and ask for renewal of your Section 333 approval. While the FAA is not likely to reverse the amendment as a whole, the FAA may do it on an individual basis if the operator is able to prove that they have been flying safely over people. In the end, the most important thing to the FAA (and hopefully to the operator) should be safe operation of the drone.

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