DJI CES ban, FAA Delays Section 2209, Walmart/DroneUp Challenges

 This week in Drone News, we have three stories for you, the DJI CES ban, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) delays Section 2209 again, and Walmart and DroneUp are facing some delivery challenges. Let’s get to it.

DJI CES ban

The first story this week is DJI is banned from CES. Now, if you went to CES this year, you may have noticed that DJI was not in attendance.

Allegedly, this is due to the fact that they are included in the Department of Commerce entity list. Now, this was also confirmed by DroneXL via an email that quoted companies on the Department of Commerce entity list are not allowed to be exhibiting at CES. An interesting note on this is the fact that Huawei, the Chinese telecommunication company, was permitted to have a booth at the exhibit despite their being on the same exact list as DJI. So think about that. Note: Huawei was not present in 2023 but was at CES in 2020.

Section 2209

Your second story this week is Section 2209. If you’re not familiar with that section, this is still unfulfilled by the FAA Authorization Act of 2016. The rule is to limit drone usage around critical infrastructures and other locations that warrant such restriction.

The goal of this section is to limit drone usage in areas where drones would pose a security risk. You might think that this is an unnecessary restriction on drones. I actually want you to think about this as a section that’s very much needed. At the moment, every state is able to decide what qualifies as critical infrastructure and what doesn’t, and that can lead to very unnecessary restrictions. So having a standardized set of rules would make it a lot easier for everyone, every drone pilot across the country, to actually follow them.

Section 2209 was initially set to be released in January 2017. Just a few months after the introduction of Part 107, and of course, now it’s 2023, and the data has been pushed again because the FAA still hasn’t issued the NPRM regarding the section.

What’s interesting is that we’re getting into 2023 FAA Reauthorization Act and who knows what’s gonna happen then, but that section 2209 should be going live 12 months after it has been approved, after the NPRM, so now it’s being pushed to sometime in 2024 before we have anything on the books, if it’s not delayed yet again after this.

Walmart and DroneUP

Now your third and final story this week is Walmart and DroneUp have started doing deliveries, and while they’re getting a little bit of flack for it, multiple residents in Glendale, Arizona, don’t seem to be on board with the deliveries. And the drone being over their heads all the time. The primary complaint seems to be noise, privacy, and safety.

Both Walmart and DroneUp have issued statements about the Glendale operation, but there doesn’t seem to be any clear cuts as to when this is gonna end and then when the complaints are gonna come to a close.

That’s it. That’s all we have for you this week, like subscribe, and we’ll see you next week.