CTA Would Back FAA ‘Flexibility’ in Enabling Drone Registrations at Retail Point of Sale
Despite the Federal Aviation Administration’s 30-day waiver of its $5 registration fee on small recreational drones (see 1512140019), the Consumer Technology Association stands by its belief that the agency’s imposition of a fee-based registration system was the wrong decision, said Doug Johnson, vice president-technology policy, in an interview. Registrations officially began Dec. 21, and the waiver window on the $5 fee closes Jan. 20.
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The FAA’s registration task force, of which CTA was a member (see 1511230034), “thought it would be best if registrations were a free process,” on the grounds that imposing fees would hamper registrations and discourage compliance, Johnson said. “But the FAA decided against that recommendation. They did not concur with that recommendation, and decided to impose a small fee.” CTA shared the “concern” of most other task force members that “any sort of payment presents just one more task or a burden in the process of registration,” he said. CTA wanted to be sure registrations were “as simple and easy a process as possible,” he said.
Johnson sidestepped our question whether he buys the FAA’s argument in the rule that took effect Dec. 21 that the agency was statutorily obligated to impose a registration fee. “That’s interesting, but you’ll have to talk to them,” Johnson said of FAA officials. “But I read the same thing as you did.” Agency representatives didn’t comment.
History includes several examples of federally mandated registration systems that specifically excluded imposition of a registration fee, Johnson said. He cited a February 2013 FCC order on the registration of signal booster devices (docket No. 10-4), when the commission “at that time considered whether they should impose a fee, but decided not to, for some of the same reasons we were concerned about on the task force.” The FCC found that imposing registration fees would “discourage” consumers from registering their boosters and might “dissuade” others “from using these beneficial devices at all,” its order said. “Clearly, two different agencies on two different matters,” Johnson conceded of the FAA and FCC and the two proceedings. But both were “registration-related and were decided differently,” he said.
CTA and other task force members “were aware of a requirement” on the books that the FAA could use as a basis for imposing registration fees on recreational drones despite widespread opposition against doing so, Johnson said. “But nonetheless, we recommended that there be no fee,” he said. Task force members saw “perhaps some leeway, or possibilities anyways, of that requirement being interpreted in different sorts of ways,” but to no avail, he said.
It’s an “emerging concern” at CTA that an abundance of local rules on drone operations could hamper adoption of drone technology, and the FAA was wise to put out its Dec. 17 “fact sheet” asserting that it holds sole regulatory sway over matters of aviation safety, Johnson said. “We have an opportunity to create a policy framework that affords safety, but also allows for innovation and growth in this emerging product category,” he said. CTA is concerned that while the FAA has clear regulatory authority over the safety of the national airspace, “we still are seeing states and cities attempting to create their own regulatory regimes,” he said. “We’re very concerned about the confusion, the conflict, that could result from such a mishmashed policy framework.”
Other countries and regions around the world “are taking more organized approaches, in some cases, more liberal approaches,” to recreational drone operations, Johnson said. “It just points to the competitive environment we’re all in. We really want to succeed and maintain U.S. leadership in this space.” But domestically speaking, “we’re challenged by a rapidly growing, and not necessarily homogeneous, approach to policy making” at the state and local level, he said.
Within the FAA task force, recommending the voluntary imposition of drone registration advisories at the retail point of sale with the idea of spreading the word about the federal registration requirement “was discussed and dismissed as an option,” Johnson said. “For several reasons, point of sale just wasn’t the right approach” for spreading consumer awareness, he said. That’s because “we had to focus on the more feasible, more workable approach that required the owner or operator to register the drone, as opposed to the purchaser,” he said.
CTA would welcome any “flexibility” the FAA can afford retailers that “down the road” may want to voluntarily offer the services of drone registrations at the point of sale, so long as that capability is an option, not a "mandate," Johnson said. “We support the FAA’s making available the software and connections to the data base that would allow private-sector registrations” to take place, he said. There’s software that would enable “third parties to tap into the registration system so that it could be an automated process if you happen to be registering” in a manner that’s different from the “direct-registration” system online or through hard copy that's in place at the FAA, he said. “That sort of flexibility down the road we think makes a lot of sense. There ought to be various ways of registering your drones, and all should be simple and easy in order to facilitate compliance.”