During her tenure at the Transportation Department, Thomson helped craft regulations on driverless cars to unmanned aircraft—often known as “drones.” Her departure for Amazon comes as the Seattle-based technology giant looks to see drones take off as a delivery system for the many products it sells and ships. The company completed its first demonstration of a drone delivery in the United States last month. In December, Amazon made its first-ever drone delivery in the United Kingdom.
Companies in the commercial drone space—including Amazon—are navigating a new regulatory and compliance regime that took effect last year. The FAA’s current scheme does not permit flights over people, at night or beyond the pilot’s line of sight—restrictions that can be waived on a case-by-case basis.
The drone industry has criticized the waiver process as overly cumbersome. And it has expressed concern that the Trump administration’s 2-for-1 regulatory rollback executive order could stall the development of desired new rules that would encourage more test flights and innovation.
One industry group, the Commercial Drone Alliance, said it supported the spirit of President Donald Trump’s executive order on regulations. But the group said it was concerned that any rollback of rules, or prevention of new regulations, would have “unintended negative consequences on the growth of our industry. New rules are necessary to remove existing regulatory barriers around commercial drone use.”
“As drafted, the [executive order] could actually damage the commercial drone industry’s ability to take off in the United States,” the group wrote in February to the Office of Management and Budget.
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