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FAA’s B4UFLY App Helps Drone Operators to Be Safe in the Sky
It has gotten hard now to fly drones in the US, with increased restrictions and regulations. From December you must register your drone right away before you even go on your first flight. Existing drones bought before December have to be registered no later than February 2016. If you register before midnight EST January 20, 2016, the $5 fee will be refunded. However, you must pay first. Therefore, they can get their hands on your payment data and have another way of tracking you down.
There are now a lot of rules and regulations to follow and that’s why the FAA has built its own app for drone operators – B4UFLY (an abbreviation for “before you fly”. The app tells you if it’s safe to fly and informs you about restricted airspace. It also has a planner mode, where you can plan future flights and see what kind of restrictions are in place in the desired area.
The B4UFLY app has potential if the FAA keeps it up to date and adds features to make it the To-Use-Tool for drone operators. In some rare scenarios, you must contact the control tower in the area and tell them you are about to fly in their airspace. This could be as well included in the app and makes it easier for drone operators to fly. According to the FAA, 181,061 people have registered their drones as of this week.
iOS users can download the app in the App Store and Android users can opt-in to participate in a beta test of the app.
Hopefully, they will be smart enough and create a source where counties and cities can post their rules as well. Some cities already have banned drones from their airspace and if you go somewhere, you don’t want to do hour-long research whether you can fly or not. My other wish is that drone operators get smarter and don’t try dangerous things.
Update 2023-10-15:
Nope, nobody added that feature yet. Flying a drone involves still a lot of manual labor work if you want to make sure you comply with all rules and regulations.
Peter is an award-winning photographer who travels all over the world to capture the beauty of our planet as well as the achievements of humanity. Follow Peter on his travel blog Gate to Adventures for more amazing places to go and explore.
