WASHINGTON — City Hall and the feds are scrambling to put new restrictions in place before the estimated 400,000 drones sold this holiday season flood the skies.
The Federal Aviation Administration will soon launch a drone registry to better track operators.
A federal task force announced its recommendations this week with the hope the registry would be running by the end of the year. The aim is to regulate hobbyists and reduce aerial dangers such as close calls with airplanes.
“The timeline involved in this registration initiative is certainly unprecedented,” said Douglas Johnson, an executive at the Consumer Technology Association, which was part of the task force.
“It’s a matter of weeks from start to finish.”
Drone sales are expected to top 700,000 this year alone, with 400,000 sold during the holiday gift-giving season. CTA projects sales this year to jump more than 60 percent as hobbyists grab more affordable and smaller models.
“We are going to see a ton of drones in the airspace very soon and especially over the holiday season, so basically the FAA decided we need to do something fast about this,” said Brett Velicovich, one of the founders of Expert Drones, which will open next year in Westfield Garden State Plaza mall in Paramus, NJ.
Recreational drones range from the hot-selling Phantom 3 Professional, which costs more than $1,000, to tiny nano-drones with cameras that run a couple hundred dollars.
If the FAA adopts the recommendations as is, drone owners will be required to fill out a Web-based application. In turn, they’d receive a registration number that would be placed on the drone.
“The FAA wants to know who owns these drones if they find them in places they are not supposed to be. If one drops in the middle of La Guardia, a lot of times no one knows who owns that drone,” Velicovich said.
Currently, hobbyists can fly drones with few restrictions — as long as they are at least five miles away from an airport, out of no-fly zones and flying under 400 feet.
Commercial drone operators – like those that shoot for movies — must get permission from the FAA. But that could all change in New York City.
City Council members are trying to pass legislation to drastically restrict drones in the city because they believe the FAA hasn’t gone far enough.
“Every New Yorker should be concerned about a proliferation of drones in our airspace,” Councilman Dan Garodnick told The Post. “They pose real challenges for public safety and privacy.”