ydqa ep 24

John Dickow: [00:00:00] hello and welcome back. Another episode of Your Drone Questions Answered. I'm John Dicko here to find the answers to your drone questions. today I have with me once again, David Young, founder of Drone Logic Academy. David, thank you for joining me

David Young: again today. Good to be here.

So the

John Dickow: question today is actually pretty relevant. It is. Can you fly a drone in New York City Good timing for this question because there has been some changes over the past, you know, month or so. I'm just gonna throw it at you. David. Can you fly a drone in New York

David Young: City today?

I. yes you can. So it used to be pretty restricted. It was almost impossible to fly a drone in New York City, at least legally. recently, I think it was as of July, 2023, they changed the rules 'cause they wanted to be a little bit more innovation friendly. You know, the mayor, it was the mayor, and then the N Y P D, the head of the N Y P D came out with these, these new rules to operate your drone in New York.

if you want, we can just dive in and go through. If you have a drone and you wanna fly to New York, what do you gotta do? so first off, if you want to fly drones and you're in New York City and you're doing this for commercial use, these we're covering [00:01:00] kind of commercial uses.

You go to nyc.gov/drone permits and there you're gonna be able to fill out a whole kind of permit application process. It's gonna ask you for a bunch of stuff. but we can go through the rules and what that's gonna be like. in order to fly a drone in New York City, you do have to have, they, they call it takeoff and landing permit.

'cause technically the f a A controls all of the air. So once you're. In the air, you have to abide by all the same, f a a rules that you would have to abide by anywhere else in the country. And we've covered those in other podcasts and other resources, with controlled airspace, uncontrolled airspace, all that stuff.

But N Y P D, New York City, they control where you can take off from and where you can land from, and then where you can be standing when you operate. So when you go to submit a permit, to this U R L that I mentioned, it's $150, permit fee or application fee for them to even review your permit.

And you can submit like multiple, instances if you want. Like, hey, I'm gonna do, I'm gonna be flying at this time, and then another one in this location, and then another one at this time. But you can only do up [00:02:00] to five on like one permit. So if you're gonna do like five jobs, let's say you're a company and you're gonna be flying five times, you can only put five of 'em on there, as far as I know.

So once you apply, then you wait and then they can approve you, or reject you, based on, you know, if you are, you have your part 1 0 7 license, if you have insurance, um, all these other things, right? So if you wanna move on, I. You have to have insurance. I didn't realize this until I started digging through the documents.

I hadn't seen this on any websites. So if you look in the code, if in case anybody wants to nerd out, it's uh, 24 dash oh six is the section, on insurance. So if you go to, nyc.gov, you can find the, the link there, or search New York Drone Rules, P D F, where we can link it below. But you have to have at least, um, $2 million per occurrence and $4 million in aggregate of, commercial general liability insurance.

it's more than probably people would normally have, or at least a lot of small drone operations. So you would need some type of, it says at its own expense. You know, the person flying has to have commercial general liability [00:03:00] insurance and drone aviation liability slash. Unmanned aircraft systems coverage, each C G L commercial general liability and drone aviation liability insurance policy must, and then it talks about all this stuff, right?

Cover the damage and have all these different things. But the main thing is, has to be, $2 million per occurrence, $4 million in aggregate of coverage, which can sometimes be a little bit more costly. And then, on top of that, I feel like the next biggest thing people are gonna wanna know is, what if I just don't do it?

Like, what are the penalties? Yeah. If I'm just like, screw New York City, I just, you see this whenever we run ads about regulations or like part 1 0 7 or, um, anything. Right? There's like a $5 drone registration. That thing that the f a a set up years ago, it's like, Hey, you gotta register your drone, pay $5 on the f a a website.

You would act like people are like, you're robbing me, you're tapping my phones. You know, people, people don't like, so people would always push back the comments. There always a lot of pushback. they're like, what if I just, you know, screw the government, do what I wanna do? Technically, the N Y P D can find you, $250 the [00:04:00] first time, first violation.

to be honest, it's not that much more than the actual application to do it, so I don't know how effective that one's gonna be. Uh, second one is $500 within a one year period, so, you know, if you wait one year, it's back to two 50, I guess. Um, and then the third is if you have a third violation in a one year period, it's a thousand dollars.

but the kicker is anytime, uh, you do this, you can get charged with a misdemeanor. Uh, if you're the one who quote causes the aircraft to take off our land in violation of the. section of the city code. So, misdemeanor, 250 bucks, I think the misdemeanor is more of a deterrent than the actual, uh, two 50.

If someone else is willing to pay one 50 just to apply. Right. we can walk through the process really quickly of What you have to do. So if you're kind of visualize. to go in this process, right? So you go to nyc.gov/drone permits, valid email, make up a password, you sign up, you get in. it's gonna ask you to create a password, and then you go to apply for a permit.

so you have to say who you are, who the proposed operators are, if you have any visual observers, and then you gotta give your required certifications, like your part 1 0 [00:05:00] 7 certificate. Any other attachments. and things like that, you know, your insurance and they want any other information that will help them, make a decision.

if you're a business entity, they're gonna wanna know that kind of information or like a business or a school. then you're gonna have to give your date of birth, your full name, your address, your email address, your phone number, all the information about your business entity, all your required documentation.

So your, Photo id, your insurance policies, data privacy policies and cybersecurity policies. another thing to mention. So if you're gonna be, what they call capturing or transmitting photos and videos, which I gotta be honest, it's like what 99% of drones are gonna be, have some type of camera on them.

And that's the whole purpose of having the drone. you have to submit. A notice to the community board. So I'm, it sounds like there are community boards in New York City. I don't know what technically the definition of a community board is for them. I couldn't really find a great definition on that. But it's some community entity.

You have to notify them. I think it's like 48 hours into advance that, Hey, I'm gonna be flying a [00:06:00] drone in this area. And then you have to notify and post a notice to all businesses, homes, whatever, within a hundred feet of your takeoff and landing zone, letting them know you'll be capturing or transmitting photos and videos, with your drone, right?

So there's. first, you gotta get the permit and there's notification requirements. There's insurance requirement. gotta jump through some hoops to do this. It's not just sure, go and fly your drone. But I guess the benefit of it is it does allow you to, do some type of drone operation, unmanned aircraft operation in the New York City area, um, where you couldn't before.

And it, they do carve out exclusions for emergencies. You know, like if it's an emergency landing or emergency takeoff, whatever. I don't know. I guess you would have to kind of figure out what, an emergency is defined as, or maybe that's Up for debate. it wasn't necessarily specifically defined in here.

so that's, that's kind of it, it in a nutshell. but other than that, you'd have to debate all the other regulations. So New York City, a lot of controlled airspace, so you can't, yeah. You know, you got [00:07:00] LaGuardia, you got J F K, um, you got Newark pretty close by. You got all these big airports, not to mention all the other airports around there.

So you have a lot of controlled airspace to deal with. So if you're gonna be taking off, In Manhattan, I'm sure I, I could look at the, the charts, but I'm sure that's in some type of controlled airspace. So you'd have to then coordinate through, the lance system, which is the low altitude authorization and notification capability.

Usually you can do that through a whole myriad of different apps. I usually use Aloft. it's a great company, great app. So you can go to the Aloft app. You can say, Hey, here's where I'm gonna fly, here's where I'm, you know, my permit's for tap it. It'll show you any type of, Temporary flight restrictions or controlled airspace or whatever, and then it'll walk you the process of applying to be able to fly in the airspace.

So at first with New York, you're just applying to be able to get it off the ground right there. and then afterwards you have to make sure you can fly in the airspace. So you have to work it out with the f a, that you can actually fly there and operate in the air, and then you need the permit from the New York City to get, get it back on the [00:08:00] ground.

So a little bit of a process, but that's it kind of in a nutshell. Sure.

John Dickow: I mean, would the same apply for like a no-fly zone or is that the same thing as a controlled airspace

David Young: or is that kind of a different No, so like, uh, a no-fly zone would probably more like a T F R. It is like a temporary flight restriction.

So for instance, let's say the president was gonna be flying up to New York City to. Do a speech or something, right? They put a T F R around New York City being like, Hey, no aircraft can kind of come in or out. There's certain restrictions, obviously they wouldn't shut down all the air traffic at those huge airports, but they would say, you know, no other kind of general aviation in the area, like little Cessnas.

Um, any other planes would have to be flying pretty high, clearly, like no drones. So if there's any like big event, national security thing, Other reason that they might need to kind of shut down the airspace. that's what A T F R would be in that, that would be kind of a no-fly zone. Another no-fly zone, which would be like more permanent ones would be prohibited Airspace that's like around the White House, you know, other kind of sensitive locations where the F A A has declared those, like kind of completely off limits to, uh, air traffic.

Oh

John Dickow: wow. it's a lot to know, and [00:09:00] it sounds like it, you gotta really have your ducks in a row to, to actually do this. I mean, the insurance alone, that's serious, right?

David Young: yeah. So can't really just decide today that I'm gonna fly in New York City tomorrow, you know, require some planning, but at least it can be done now, which it couldn't happen before.

Yeah. very, very cool.

John Dickow: anything else you want to add?

David Young: No, I would just say, you know, if you're gonna do it, play by the rules, there's no point in getting yourself into trouble and messing it up for other operators who are gonna do it the right way.

So it's in your long-term best interest to do things the right way and, navigate the rules as they are. Try to accomplish your mission the best you can. Very cool. Well, there

John Dickow: you have it. You can now fly a drone in New York City as of July, 2023. thanks David for coming on and giving us this run through.

I think this is, useful information and you can submit your own questions, uh, and we'll find the answers to them. You can submit them@ydqa.io or if you're part of the Drone Launch Connect community. Go ahead, type in a question there. We'll find it and, uh, we'll look for answers. Until then, we'll see you in the sky.