FAA Grounds Non-commercial Texas Search And Rescue UAV Flights

Drone Team That Finds Missing People and Dead Bodies Would Like To Keep Doing That

A volunteer search-and-rescue team out of Houston is doing its best to make the FAA’s restrictions on drone use look really, really bad. The Texas EquuSearch Mounted Search and Recovery Team has retained drone lawyer Brendan Schulman (who famously got a judge to issue a ruling last month questioning the FAA’s drone authority) to write an angry letter to the FAA letting it know that the group will sue if the airspace-regulating agency doesn’t let it do what it wants with its search-and-rescue drones. And what it wants to do is find missing persons, an incredibly sympathetic drone use case.


The team uses a remote controlled Spectra flying wing plane with a camera that can photograph “a square mile in less than 10 minutes,” according to the letter. The letter doesn’t mention the
unmanned plane spotting any living missing persons, though it has “directly pinpointed the location of remains of 11 deceased missing
people,” such as a 2-year-old who went missing in April 2012. His red shirt was spotted in a drone photo in an area of the swamp through which search-kayakers had already passed without seeing his body. “Because of the presence of alligators in the water, had the body not been found by the model aircraft, it likely never would have been found, and Devon’s family would to this day not know what became of their child,” they write in their letter to the FAA.


FAA Grounds Non-commercial Search And Rescue UAV Flights | Aero-News Network


FAA Behaves Like A Petulant Child Trying To Prove A Point By Misbehaving


Once again the FAA has gone after the operation of UAVs as if they actually had regulations to control it. Only last month, an NTSB judge ruled that the FAA did not have control over drone flights because they were using an internal document that has not gone through a regulatory process.

As reported in an article published on arstechnica.com, a group in Texas that voluntarily searches for missing persons through the use of a UAV in a non-commercial operation is being told by the FAA
they need approval to do so. The group known as Texas EquuSearch Mounted Search and Recovery Team voluntarily helps local authorities search for missing persons with the aid of a UAV mounted television camera.


In the article it’s reported that the group’s founder, Tim Miller said, "This technology gives us a better chance at finding missing people alive without the high cost of using helicopters, which are often
not even available, and making the best and safest use of our volunteer searchers' time during the critical first hours. The drones help me fulfill the promise I make to families that I will use every resource available to bring home their missing loved ones." According to EquuSearch, they have found more than 300 persons alive in some 42 states and eight countries.


The FAA contends that the search and rescue organization can, through an email process, request a certificate of authorization on a case-by-case basis. However, there still appears to be no regulatory
reason for this sort of bureaucratic approach.


It seems beyond reason that the FAA continues with this approach to UAV operation without addressing it through the standard regulatory process. It looks like another case of the FAA taking the path of ruling through intimidation alone regardless of the law.

FMI: http://texasequusearch.org, www.faa.gov, www.auvsi.org