Now headed to President Obama to become law, the bill requires the FAA to decide on regulations that would permit drones (the official nomenclature is UAS – Unmanned Aerial System) to operate in the same airspace as commercial jets and police helicopters. The order was included in the Reauthorization Act that extended FAA’s funding for another four years, at a cost of $64 billion.
The bill does not make the regulations for the FAA, but instead orders the FAA to make regulations within certain bounds. But it does state that the FAA should create a “a safe, non-exclusionary airspace designation for cooperative manned and unmanned flight operations.”
