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A federally convened task force plans to urge U.S. officials to cast a wide net in registering recreational drones but make registration simple and free, according to three people familiar with the matter.
After three days of meetings, the task force Thursday agreed to recommend registration for recreational drones weighing more than 250 grams, or roughly nine ounces, according to two task-force members and a third person close to the group. That would include almost all consumer devices other than toys.
The group also plans to recommend that users register by entering their name and address into a government-sanctioned website or mobile app, the people said. Registration would be free. Users would have to attach a registration number to drones so that it is legible, and they can use the same number for multiple drones.
“You can put it in indelible ink, you can bedazzle it,” one of the people said. “It just needs to be legible so (authorities) are able to read it.”
The Federal Aviation Administration convened nearly 30 government, industry and consumer representatives to recommend rules for registering recreational drones before Christmas. U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx proposed the regulations last month, saying they needed to be adopted quickly because drones are endangering manned aircraft. He gave the task force until Nov. 20 to deliver recommendations.
Drones have soared in popularity in recent years as technology advances have made them cheaper, smaller and easier to fly. Regulators have struggled to keep up as hundreds of thousands of the devices took to U.S. skies.
The FAA is expected to closely follow the group’s recommendations, in part because of the expedited timeline for the rules and because the task force reached a nearly unanimous consensus, the people familiar with the matter said.
They described the recommendations as a compromise. Drone-industry representatives wanted a higher weight threshold for requiring registration, but other members pointed to a study that found drones heavier than approximately 250 grams could injure people if they crash. With the lower threshold, the group agreed to make registration as easy as possible, including allowing users to register one time for multiple drones.
By comparison, registering a manned aircraft requires visiting an FAA office and can take as long as three months.
“What we achieved can be characterized as a package deal,” one task-force member said. “No one got everything they wanted; you could say everyone is a little unhappy.”
The task force didn’t recommend new penalties for violating the registration rules, the people familiar with the matter said. Users who operate unregistered drones would be subject to existing federal penalties, which include civil or criminal fines and up to three years in prison.
One person said the group could propose lesser penalties before the recommendations are due, but that was unlikely.
The task force is co-chaired by Earl Lawrence, a top FAA drone official, and Dave Vos, head of the drone-delivery project at Google parent
Alphabet Inc. Other members include representatives from the largest airline-pilots union, an association of airport executives, consumer-drone makers like SZ DJI Technology Co., and companies that want to use drones in their businesses, like
Amazon.com Inc.and
Wal-Mart Stores Inc.
Write to Jack Nicas at
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