1. Blue Eyes, Inc. is a U.S. company that began in the commercial aerial photography business but has been expanding in recent years into other forms of airborne sensing, imaging, and mapping such as infrared, ultraviolet, hyperspectral, and radar (including ground-penetrating radar).
The company is headquartered in the Pacific Northwest, and most of its customers are located in the states of Alaska, Washington, Oregon and Idaho. Perceiving a growing market for its products and services, but noticing an increasing shortage of qualified pilots available for hire and capable of flying with the degree of precision required by these missions, the company has decided to explore the possibility of acquiring and utilizing unmanned aircraft systems to perform some of these missions.
Some of these tasks, such as precision micro-mapping of the ground moisture distribution on smaller farms, could be performed by UAS smaller than 55 lbs. (either fixed or rotary-wing) and operating at or below 500’ AGL (above ground level), while other large-scale mapping such as what the company performs under contract for state environmental agencies, would require much heavier, much higher-flying fixed-wing UAS with much longer endurance. Some contracts require flight over congested urban areas in busy controlled and positively-controlled airspace, while others focus on sparsely-populated or unpopulated areas with less busy airspace.
The company has hired you to advise them on the UAS project in this time of rapid legal developments in the industry. Research and prepare a paper covering the following:
a. Describe in detail the current FAA regulatory requirements governing the operations of the full range of UAS that may be needed to cover as many of the company’s customer needs as possible, considering the differing operating environments given and specifically addressing:
i. Airspace and altitude restrictions,
ii. Company, operator and visual observer qualifications,
iii. Company, operator and visual observer line-of-sight limitations,
iv. Limitations on operator and visual observer simultaneously controlling/observing multiple UAS, and
v. Potential penalties against the company, its operators and visual observers in the event of an FAR violation.
b. Analyze and describe the duties of the company and its operators, if any, to notify any federal agency and submit a written report in the event of an incident or accident involving a company UAS.
c. Analyze current state laws in each of the 4 states where the company operates to determine whether, and if so to what extent, they might also affect the company’s proposed UAS operations.
d. Analyze the potential liability of the company, its owners and employees in civil litigation arising out of injuries to others (such as a collision with a manned aircraft or crash harming persons or property on the ground during company UAS operations):
i. Caused by a maintenance or operational error by a company employee acting within the scope of his/her employment
ii. If the violation of an FAR intended to prevent such accidents was involved
iii. If UAS operations are deemed to be an ultrahazardous activity (take into consideration that a major cause of UAS accidents is interruption of the ground-air data link)
e. Assume that the company’s current operations are adequately insured. Advise the company on additional insurance you recommend adding to cover these UAS and their operations, explaining your reasoning clearly.
