Serious Study Needed To Get A Drone License

On Aug. 31, Tony Gupton, a 37-year veteran of the WRAL Raleigh, N.C., engineering staff, recalls having that uncomfortable mixture of apprehension and anticipation felt by high school or college students most every day when he submitted his answers to the certification exam that would allow him to fly small, unmanned drones. 

“When I got up from the exam, I wasn’t sure if I passed or not,” he says. “I felt the test was hard.”

Gupton was among the thousands of people in the initial wave to take the Federal Aviation Administration’s certification exam to fly small drones — those under 55 pounds — for commercial purposes.

Of the 5,089 people who took the exam between Aug. 29 — the first day it was offered — and Sept. 16, some 88% passed, which falls right in line with the pass rate for the written tests private pilots must take, says an FAA spokesperson.

The FAA does not break down the number by industry, so it’s not possible to know how many are from the media.

(WRAL Raleigh, N.C., relied on its drone for footage used in a recent documentary on commercial versus sport fishing. Watch a video here. Image and video courtesy of WRAL.)

However, the FAA statistics don’t tell the whole story because unlike someone who takes a pilot’s exam, those coming to the drone test with little to no aviation background haven’t had the benefit of a flight instructor to mentor them for months on end and drive home extremely specialized aviation knowledge, says Matt Waite, a private pilot, professor of journalism and director of the Drone Journalism Lab — the nation’s first — at the University of Nebraska.

The FAA’s pass-fail numbers don’t distinguish between those like Gupton, who go into the exam without being a licensed pilot, and those who are.

“I have been telling people this is not the kind of test that you can just read a couple things on the internet and sort of hope to bluff your way through,” Waite says. “You’ve got to study, or you are going to get hammered.”

This summer, Waite conducted a three-day drone boot camp for people wishing to take the certification exam for Part 107 operation — the FAA regulation covering operation of small, commercial drones.

“From the beginning, the FAA said they were going to test you about weather that might affect flight, about aviation weather reports called METARs, basic aeronautics, airspace, airspace charts and of course the new rules about drones themselves as well as other areas of Federal Aviation Administration regulations you might run into flying a drone, like temporary flight restrictions and restricted airspace,” Waite says.

Gupton, who attended the boot camp along with 61 other students, is among the 16 from the class who have taken and passed the test so far.

However, it is impossible for a three-day class like the boot camp to prepare students fully for the exam, says Waite.

Rather, the boot camp aimed to identify the 40 or so pages of the hundreds upon hundreds of pages in general aviation texts that were necessary to pass the exam for a Part 107 license, he says.

“There is a pretty substantial amount of time needed outside the class,” Waite says. That amounted to about 100 hours of studying for Gupton, the WRAL engineer says.

Given that commercial drone operators are restricted to flying only 400 feet above ground level in most circumstances, are required to maintain line of sight with their aircraft and must adhere to strict regulations about hours of operation, Gupton says he wonders if the knowledge tested for a Part 107 license was a bit of overkill.

“Why do we need to know all of this information?” he asks.

In particular, Gupton wonders about the degree of knowledge licensed small drone operators must have about controlled airspace around airports.

“With this certification, you could be granted permission to fly within controlled airspace,” he says. “I could seek permission to lift off from the RDU [Raleigh-Durham International Airport] tarmac.”

Although permission could be granted, Gupton says he doubts it would ever be given or that he would even ask.

However, the FAA’s priority is on safety, so it sees the breadth of the Part 107 exam as appropriate and necessary.

“The questions test for knowledge of the certification standards the FAA views as the foundation to an integrated, systematic approach to airman certification,” says an FAA spokesperson.

Those standards are part of the safety management system the FAA employs to mitigate risk.

“Anyone who has never had any type of pilot’s license may be unfamiliar with what’s needed to operate as part of the nation’s aviation system when flying a drone under Part 107,” says the spokesperson.

The FAA selected the standards for the certification to make sure Part 107 operators understand “the overall aviation system,” which helps promote safety, “not just drone operation,” the spokesperson adds.

During these early days of drone flights by the media, it is important for TV broadcasters and other news organizations to embrace their legal obligation to put safety first, says Bill Allen, a science journalism professor at the University of Missouri School of Journalism.

“Everybody is watching right now as drone journalism is literally getting off the ground in the United States,” says Allen, who is also the co-coordinator of the Missouri Drone Journalism Program. “Let’s not mess it up.”

Resisting the pressure to bend the rules in competitive newsgathering situations will be key to successful media use of drones, adds Waite.

“It’s not the news director screaming into the phone who is going to lose the license,” he says. “It’s not the news producer pitching a fit because they didn’t get their drone shot for the 6 o’clock [news]. It’s the pilot in command.”

Television stations with news helicopters are already familiar with the principle that it is the pilot who ultimately determines whether to fly. “Drone pilots in the eyes of the FAA are no different,” Waite says.

“Newsrooms need to understand that if the [drone] pilot in command says, ‘I can’t conduct this flight safely,’ that’s the end of the story.”

At WRAL, which has flown an HD news helicopter for years, the idea of safety first is well-established, Gupton says.

Even during the earliest of days of drone flights before the FAA had established rules for commercial drone operation, the station emphasized safety, says Gupton.

Eventually, the WRAL engineering department will hand over drone operation to the newsroom, where drone flight will be simply “another tool in their toolbox,” he says.

Even after the handoff, however, safety will remain front and center as Gupton lends his assistance to make drone operation a success for the station, he says.

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