Existing legal doctrines can work together to establish a framework in which landowners have clear, understandable rights in their real property and in which it is clear what role states and localities can play with respect to activity that occurs in the airspace above it.

Questions include the scope of private property rights in real property, the nature of airspace, the federal government’s authority to regulate aviation, and whether these paradigms should be altered to accommodate drones operating at scale.

The FAA has adopted enabling regulations that allow for routine UAS flights by commercial entities, expanded those regulations to permit routine operations at night and over people, and established remote ID requirements to ensure safe actors are authorized to be in the airspace.

The Federal Aviation Administration (“FAA”) was mandated in 2012 to integrate drones into the national airspace system, and there have been numerous provisions since then giving the FAA the authority to establish drone remote ID requirements, develop a traffic management system, and limit drone flights over critical infrastructure facilities.

Drones offer quick access to hard-to-reach places, real-time image collection for newsgathering, search and rescue, natural disaster monitoring, infrastructure inspection, and home delivery systems.