Wayne Farley's Aviation Blog - Air Traffic Control | Air Traffic Management | Safety Management System

Four months after Amazon won permission from the Federal Aviation Administration to test its Prime Air delivery drones in the skies, Google and its parent company, Alphabet, are now seeking to fly their own Project Wing delivery drones with FAA approval.

A document Google filed with the FAA earlier this month said Google wants to “operate one or more small UAS (unmanned aerial systems) to perform aerial data collection, including research and development related to aerial delivery with UAS.”

The drone operations “will not adversely affect safety, but rather will provide an equivalent or greater level of safety than that provided by the current rules, large manned aircraft operations, and other delivery methods,” Google lawyers wrote.

As of this week, Amazon is one of 1,162 drone operators that have obtained a “333” exception allowing commercial aircraft without a pilot to fly in the national airspace. The airworthiness certificates have been granted on a case-by-case basis since a 2012 law allowed the exceptions, and only 310 petitions have been closed, either because they were denied or never completed.

Citing the precedent of the Amazon application and several others, Google promised that its flights won’t exceed 100 miles per hour and the weight of its drones won’t be more than 55 pounds, even with whatever payload they might be carrying.

With so many operators seeking permission for commercial drone use, mostly for aerial imagery, “it will be a while before it’s approved, assuming it will be,” said FAA spokesman Les Dorr. Amazon’s approval process took more than half a year.

In the meantime, however, Google has been testing low-altitude delivery drones through a partnership with NASA, which has what’s called a certificate of authorization from the FAA allowing testing in national airspace.

As we wrote a few weeks ago, NASA is partnering with Google, Amazon and other companies, agencies and academic institutions to test an air traffic control system designed specifically for low-altitude drones such as those that could deliver goods or monitor farms and industrial sites.

The “collaboration allows NASA partners to work with NASA to test (traffic control) concepts using partner vehicles and other subsystems, and NASA is responsible for range and flight safety,” said spokeswoman Jessica Culler of NASA’s Ames Research Center near Moffett Field. The former federal airfield, which NASA leased out to Google in April, hosted a conference on drones last month.

The Guardian US reported earlier this week that some of Google’s testing through its NASA partnership is happening over private land near Merced, though neither Google nor NASA would confirm that information this week. If true, it wouldn’t be the first time Google tests advanced technology over the Central Valley. The former Castle Air Force Base, in unincorporated Merced County, was a testing ground for Google’s self-driving cars.

Source: Silicone Beat