The FAA Hits Company With $1.9M Fine For Illegal Drone Flights

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In case you were planning on flying unmanned aircraft in violation of the FAA regulations, you should probably know that can net you a whopping $1.9 million fine. :eek:

The FAA proposes a $1.9 million civil penalty against SkyPan International, Inc. of Chicago. Between March 21, 2012, and Dec. 15, 2014, SkyPan conducted 65 unauthorized operations in some of our most congested airspace and heavily populated cities, violating airspace regulations and various operating rules, the FAA alleges. These operations were illegal and not without risk.
 
Ouch. Though if a company declares bankruptcy, can't the owner just start a new company that does the same thing?
 
Well, the company is incorporated so that means the owner isn't liable or anything. So basically, the company goes bankrupt and as long as the owners have enough money, they can just start another one that does the same stuff. Except that now there's like a potential to get another fine if they don't find something more legal to do than fly around little radio controlled toys where they shouldn't. IDK why we haven't just banned them totally at this point considering all the people they've injured and endangered. It's pretty clear that people aren't responsible enough to have them.
 
"Flying unmanned aircraft in violation of the Federal Aviation Regulations". How big was this thing? It has to be huge to qualify as an "unmanned aircraft" doesn't it? Unless of course the FAA is trying to apply the term "unmanned aircraft" to anything that has movement in the sky and is man made. In that case a paper airplane or a birthday balloon would apply.
 
They were repeatedly warned by the FAA, disregarded the warnings and flew drones in airspace heavily trafficked by manned aircraft, putting peoples lives at risk.

If you ask me, this is a slap on the wrists.
 
tikiman2012 said:
"Flying unmanned aircraft in violation of the Federal Aviation Regulations". How big was this thing? It has to be huge to qualify as an "unmanned aircraft" doesn't it? Unless of course the FAA is trying to apply the term "unmanned aircraft" to anything that has movement in the sky and is man made. In that case a paper airplane or a birthday balloon would apply.
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from the FAA
Aircraft. A device that is used or intended to be used for flight in the air.
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if it fits that its an aircraft if it doesn't have a pilot on board its unmanned

size isnt a factor
 
DocSavage said:
Ouch. Though if a company declares bankruptcy, can't the owner just start a new company that does the same thing?
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Sure, however all assets of said company, including the drones are part of the bankruptcy proceedings, so those get taken as well. Sure buying new equipment is probably cheaper than 1.9 million but it's still something to think about, since it comes out of the owner's pocket.
 
Zarathustra[H];1041896768 said:
They were repeatedly warned by the FAA, disregarded the warnings and flew drones in airspace heavily trafficked by manned aircraft, putting peoples lives at risk.

If you ask me, this is a slap on the wrists.
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Agreed, IMO criminal charges should be brought up, not because they did it, but because they did it even though they were told repeatedly not to do it. Company dumps toxic waste, "don't do that, and here's a fine because you did it" they do it again "here's another fine..." granted drones vs. toxic waste isn't exactly the same but the idea is.
 
DocSavage said:
Ouch. Though if a company declares bankruptcy, can't the owner just start a new company that does the same thing?
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Depends how the fines and company are setup. The FAA can fine the pilot directly by name which would go around any protection the corporation would give. The FAA would generally do both, name the operator (company) and the pilot individually.

FAA can also request jail time if fines aren't paid.

If the company doesn't settle or pay, the FAA could block any entity he/she/they are involved with from obtaining a new airworthiness certs or a Certificate of Authorization to operate new UAS for commercial purposes.

You see this with startup charter operations trying to get a new 135 cert. Management is reviewed and can be the reason a cert is denied.

Pilot's could lose their UAS pilot cert, if they have one, or be blocked from getting a new one until fines are paid.

If both the company and any of their pilot's are blocked from new certs due to old fine then they are out of luck.

Best course would be for the company to request a review by the NTSB Admin Judge and argue the FAA is full of shit and their fines are excessive.

Or they could just setup a new company and obtain UAS/pilots from a 3rd party.
 
NTSB is likely to side with the FAA...it will not end well for these people
 
Cr4ckm0nk3y said:
If the company doesn't settle or pay, the FAA could block any entity he/she/they are involved with from obtaining a new airworthiness certs or a Certificate of Authorization to operate new UAS for commercial purposes.
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As I understand it, part of the reason for the fine is that they were operating without these to being with :p
 
Wait until one of these things is ingested by an aircraft on take off and there's a couple of hundred dead people to tally up.
 
Zarathustra[H];1041897038 said:
As I understand it, part of the reason for the fine is that they were operating without these to being with :p
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Yep, these charges were for flights between 2012 and 2014, SkyPan was granted a Section 333 exemption (using UAV's for commercial activities) in April 2015. These guys didn't do their research it would seems.
 
Twisted Kidney said:
Wait until one of these things is ingested by an aircraft on take off and there's a couple of hundred dead people to tally up.
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We are talking about a little quadrotor, the turbines on a plane would eat it up no problem. Also, these guys do aerial photography for skyscrapers, if commercial airplanes are flying that low I think a lot more people are going to die than just the passengers of a plane.
 
DarkStar02 said:
We are talking about a little quadrotor, the turbines on a plane would eat it up no problem. Also, these guys do aerial photography for skyscrapers, if commercial airplanes are flying that low I think a lot more people are going to die than just the passengers of a plane.
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-I dunno much about jet junk, but I remember reading someplace that the military has people walking around on their runways to pick up little bits of things that would damage a jet engine if they got sucked into one. Like they spin these fan blade things at really high speeds and pretty much sucking up anything would prolly be bad.

-Commercial airplanes have to land eventually so they do tend to fly lower than you'd think in order to get to and from the ground.

-Just because more people than the passengers of a plane would die that makes flying a drone around okay? That's a really, really weird way to justify something as okay. Usually MORE deaths mean more of a reason not to do something and not less of one, but I guess some people approach a problem from a different angle.
 
DarkStar02 said:
We are talking about a little quadrotor, the turbines on a plane would eat it up no problem
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That airliner that had to land in the Hudson after both engines failed, did so because of a double bird strike (one in each engine)

Is a quadrotor really less substantial of a hit than a bird?

Birds usually don't weigh so much.
 
Harder things penetrate further. Anyone who wants to debate that should ask themselves how armor-piercing rounds work. A drone would be harder than a bird of the same weight.
 
DarkStar02 said:
We are talking about a little quadrotor, the turbines on a plane would eat it up no problem. Also, these guys do aerial photography for skyscrapers, if commercial airplanes are flying that low I think a lot more people are going to die than just the passengers of a plane.
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ingestion would be about the WORST thing that could happen the engine would be FUCKED
if that happened at take off it be about as bad an accident you can have short of the wings coming off...

it doesnt take much to fuck up a turbine
 
Elios said:
ingestion would be about the WORST thing that could happen the engine would be FUCKED
if that happened at take off it be about as bad an accident you can have short of the wings coming off...

it doesnt take much to fuck up a turbine
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Thus what happened to US Airways Flight 1549.

Jesus Christ, hard to believe that was 6.5 years ago. Feels like just yesterday I was hearing about it on the news...

Getting old.

The secret to old people is this. Just about all of them/us feel like they "just graduated college" no matter how long ago that was :p
 
Zarathustra[H];1041897346 said:
Thus what happened to US Airways Flight 1549.

Jesus Christ, hard to believe that was 6.5 years ago. Feels like just yesterday I was hearing about it on the news...

Getting old.

The secret to old people is this. Just about all of them/us feel like they "just graduated college" no matter how long ago that was :p
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they where fucking lucky as hell too the pilot was god level at his job he really did save lives of every one on that plane
 
DarkStar02 said:
We are talking about a little quadrotor, the turbines on a plane would eat it up no problem. Also, these guys do aerial photography for skyscrapers, if commercial airplanes are flying that low I think a lot more people are going to die than just the passengers of a plane.
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Yeah, IMHO even a small mostly styrofoam quadrotor, if ingested into a jet engine (ICD code V97.33XD) id probably sufficient to cause a flameout, which means an emergency landing using one engine.

SkyPan - however - DOES NOT use little styrofoam quadrotors.

They use home brewed remote controlled "mini" helicopters. (I use quotation marks, because while smaller than a passenger model, they aren't all that mini)

From their webpage:
about_chopper.jpg


We use our own proprietary technology. SkyPan's patented, Remote Piloted Vehicles are actually camera-equipped, mini-helicopters. We can shoot images others can't.

A blimp is not stable.
A helicopter can't fly low due to new FAA regulations.
A photographer on a crane can't get that high.
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i fly stuff about that size id bet that thing weighs about 10 to 20 lbs
 
Zarathustra[H];1041897416 said:
Ever flown one into a jet engine? :p
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no but i have crashed mine... it doesnt look pretty i could only image the damage it would do if you hit full scale aircraft

RIaMfWB.jpg



thats with it hitting the ground at fairly LOW speed and the rotor just freewheeling
the frames are carbon fiber are are the rotor blades and the tail boom is aluminum

some thing like that hitting an engine at 200kts.... for get it that engine is done
OH and this heli HALF THE SIZE of the ones SkyPan was flying
 
and this one is closer in size to what SkyPan is flying

5iM6ThO.jpg
 
DarkStar02 said:
We are talking about a little quadrotor, the turbines on a plane would eat it up no problem. Also, these guys do aerial photography for skyscrapers, if commercial airplanes are flying that low I think a lot more people are going to die than just the passengers of a plane.
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These guys are flying meatier equipment than that, but nonetheless, even a little quadrotor is a very big problem. When you have a Jet engine throttled up for take off you have high RPMs on a fan, those are actually designed to take a lot of abuse, but those little copters have wires and solid, sharp bits. Hard components + high speed impact = cutting. Now your engine is ingesting itself, you ever taken a blade off a fan to see how it runs?

This company was in restricted airspace, flying 20-60lb equipment. There are rules about flight for a reason, it's not some evil hippie-communist cartel against eagles and freedom, it's because people die when shit goes sideways in flight. Nobody gets to fuck around.
 
Twisted Kidney said:
These guys are flying meatier equipment than that, but nonetheless, even a little quadrotor is a very big problem. When you have a Jet engine throttled up for take off you have high RPMs on a fan, those are actually designed to take a lot of abuse, but those little copters have wires and solid, sharp bits. Hard components + high speed impact = cutting. Now your engine is ingesting itself, you ever taken a blade off a fan to see how it runs?

This company was in restricted airspace, flying 20-60lb equipment. There are rules about flight for a reason, it's not some evil hippie-communist cartel against eagles and freedom, it's because people die when shit goes sideways in flight. Nobody gets to fuck around.
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I used to be in aircraft maintenance in the air force.

I took for granted how delicate aircraft were before I joined and now, after I served my 6 years as a maintainer, I realize how fragile aircraft really are.

To give those who still don't know a bit of scope and perspective:

Every time we had a bird strike into the engine, literally hundreds of man hours (multiple people working the same job) would get dumped into making sure that engine was not going to fuck up on the next flight.

We're talking fan blade inspections, boroscopes, vibration tests, running engines full throttle and back repeatedly to check for variances in vibration.

Meanwhile throughout all this, this plane is out of commission for at least a day (if everything checks out).

Mind you this is ONLY for a BIRD! A piece of meat, bones and feathers.

While on my deployment in 2012, for the first time I saw and heard the dangers of FOD (foreign object damage). Personnel had forgotten a small 3/8 wrench on the inlet of a B-1 engine and the personnel preparing to launch the aircraft failed to do a proper walk around of the aircraft.

Once the plane throttled up to get around the taxiway the ensuing noise was terrifying. This was what 1.7 million American dollars looks like to be thrown away in an instant from a tiny piece of metal.

Maybe this can help some realize the damage these remote controlled helicopters (made with metal parts) can do in restricted airspace.

There's a reason you can fly them freely in a lot of other places, but what this company was doing was downright illegal and dangerous to people and aircraft.
 
I just read the defense documents. It appears SkyPan tried to use a limited waiver (aerial property inspection for builders, owners and construction industry... which it isn't any of) granted earlier this year to retroactively cover all the violations it committed in completely different circumstances. The FCC tried to work with them 3 years ago to "educate" about the requirements, but SkyPan decided to ignore basically everything for the 65 flights made in violation. The "anonymous complaints" listed in the subpoena about continuing violations seem to have come from competitor(s). lol pwnd
 
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