FAA issues steep fines, Paladin launches Knighthawk 2.0, GAO flags safety gaps, and another Amazon drone crashes in Texas

Welcome to your weekly UAS news update. We have four stories for you this week. The FAA has issued several large fines for drone pilots, Paladin Drones launches a new NDAA-compliant drone, a new GAO report flags major safety gaps for BVLOS integration, and an Amazon delivery drone has crashed in Texas yet again. Let’s get to it.

FAA sends a clear message with hefty fines

First up, the FAA is sending a clear message here. The days of claiming ignorance are pretty much over. The agency posted a public enforcement summary detailing fines and license actions against drone operators, and the penalties are actually pretty steep. These are not people who are just busting 400 feet elevation. These are people who have done a little bit more.

The largest fine was a whopping $36,770 for an operator who flew a drone near an emergency response aircraft during a wildfire back in April 2023. There were also two other fines involving flying in a TFR, with one operator getting a fine of over $20,000 and another having their license revoked entirely.

The FAA also fined an operator $14,790 for flying near State Farm Stadium during the Super Bowl in 2023. So these are actually old actions that have taken a while to go through the system.

Beyond fines, the FAA is also taking licenses. They suspended the license of an operator involved in that drone incident we talked about a while back in Florida, where a 7-year-old boy was seriously injured. They also suspended the license of a pilot who flew over an NFL game in Baltimore.

The agency has updated its policy to require legal action when a drone endangers the public, violates airspace, or is used in a crime. So as always, don’t be that guy. Check your airspace, use B4UFLY, and make sure that you fly safe.

Paladin Drones launches NDAA-compliant Knighthawk 2.0

Next up, Houston-based Paladin Drones has launched its new Knighthawk 2.0, and the new Knighthawk is fully NDAA compliant. For years, if you’re not familiar with Paladin, they’ve built their DFR program on modified DJI hardware like the M30T and the M350, which works great but creates some issues for agencies concerned about federal restrictions.

This new drone was revealed at the World Defense Show in Saudi Arabia, which suggests that Paladin may be expanding internationally, which would make sense instead of remaining just domestic. The new Knighthawk 2.0 was created in partnership with the Polish company Beyond Vision. This allows them to have a clean supply chain and also gives them credibility for international defense sales.

For the specs, Paladin claims that the Knighthawk 2.0 has a flight time of over 40 minutes, a top speed of 40 mph, and can get to a 911 call in under 70 seconds, which is pretty cool. That’s a 20-second improvement over their previous claims. It’s equipped with a 4K wide and zoom camera, 640p thermal imager, and 5G and LTE connectivity.

GAO report flags major safety gaps in BVLOS integration

A new report from the Government Accountability Office — GAO for short — is raising some serious questions about the future of drone integration. The report flags significant safety gaps in the FAA’s plan to integrate drones into the national airspace, especially when it comes to beyond visual line of sight, or BVLOS, operations.

The GAO basically says that while the FAA has a long-term vision for the airspace where all aircraft are going to share data electronically, the actual plan lacks the concrete details needed to make it happen. This is very similar, by the way, to what happened with Remote ID, where the FAA basically said, well, let the industry figure it out.

The report goes on to say that the FAA doesn’t really define the specific actions, responsibilities, or the technical milestones required for drones to reliably communicate with or avoid other aircraft. It points out that today’s detect and avoid technology just isn’t ready for large-scale integration on its own. This is something that we’ve been talking about in our drone industry for quite a while. We need clear, standardized systems for deconfliction before we have thousands of drones flying BVLOS with little to no FAA oversight, as is promised in the proposed Part 108.

The FAA is aware of these issues, by the way, which is one of the reasons why they reopened the comment period for the proposed Part 108 BVLOS rules, which ended as we were recording this. The GAO’s report essentially puts more pressure on the FAA to stop talking in hypotheticals and start creating a detailed, actionable roadmap to make all of this happen. As BVLOS flights for things like delivery and inspections become more common, getting this absolutely right is crucial and critical for the safety of everyone in the air and on the ground.

Amazon delivery drone crashes in Texas — again

And finally, since we’re talking about the GAO report and why it’s so important, another Amazon Prime Air delivery drone has crashed at an apartment complex. This happened in Richardson, Texas. According to local officials, the drone struck the side of a building, fell onto a nearby sidewalk, and began smoking. Thankfully, no one was injured, and while the smoke was visible on video, the drone never actually caught fire. The fire department was on the scene as well.

It’s also quite scary to see that the propellers continued to spin even after the crash, with people nearby taking a look at what just happened. A witness who was working from home saw the drone flying and started recording just out of curiosity, only to capture the aftermath of the crash.

Amazon has since apologized, launched an internal investigation, and is handling repairs to the building. It’s not clear whether or not the accident has been reported to the NTSB or the FAA, or is being investigated by either agency.

By the way, this is not the first time we’ve talked about Amazon drones crashing in the wild. In fact, we saw two Amazon drones crash into a crane in Arizona late last year. Incidents like this are a bit of a head scratcher. They highlight the real-world challenges of operating autonomous aircraft in dense residential areas and in the airspace in general. Thankfully there were no injuries in this case, but it’s even more evidence that these operations need FAA oversight to make sure they’re doing the right thing.

You can watch the full video on the Pilot Institute YouTube channel. For more content from Greg, check out his author page on DroneXL.