NetMoby, Inc., through its counsel, Robert E. Kelly, Esq., on August 23, 2016, has
submitted to the Federal Aviation Administration (“FAA”) a Petition
For Reconsideration pursuant to 5 U.S.C. § 553 in reply to the Federal
Aviation Administration, Department of Transportation’s Final Rule in Operation
and Certification of Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems, 81 FR
42063 (June 28, 2016), Docket No. FAA-2015-0150 (FAA Final Rule”). NetMoby filed comments in response to the
Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (“NPRM”) in Docket
No. FAA-2015-0150 on April 24, 2015, and thus had standing to file its Petition for Reconsideration. NetMoby asked for reconsideration specifically of the provision
of the FAA Final Rule which prohibits the use of small UAS (“sUAS”) from
transportation of property for compensation or hire between locations within
the District of Columbia. The FAA’s adoption of this regulation for
sUAS will most likely bar the use of sUAS
from transportation of property for compensation or hire between
locations within the District of Columbia permanently,
while the rest of the United States (and the world) develops an industry that
will rival the current standard aviation industry. As a company
incorporated in the District of Columbia, which has previously been awarded a waiver
pursuant to Section 333 of the
FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012, Public Law 112-95 (P.L. 112-95), in Exemption No. 16314, Regulatory Docket No.
FAA–2015–7428, NetMoby will be directly and adversely affected
by the adoption of this provision of the Final Rule.
The exclusion of the District of
Columbia in the new rules from transportation of property for compensation or
hire between locations within the District of Columbia is arbitrary and
capricious. It is based on the initial rules
governing commercial aviation, which were first promulgated in 1958, at the
dawn of the modern aviation industry and well before the invention of sUAS. It is an anachronism carried over from the
regulatory stage when the rules governing air transport were revised in 1994,
still decades before sUAS were contemplated as being integrated into the
National Airspace System (NAS).
NetMoby believes the FAA’s imposition of this prohibition on transportation
of property for compensation or hire between locations within the District of
Columbia i is an arbitrary and capricious
decision resulting from an entire absence of reasoned decisionmaking and must
be reversed. The citizens of the
District of Columbia must be allowed to participate in the development of the
enormous, world-wide UAS
industry and the economic benefits thereof, particularly when the
prohibition is based on no sound legal
basis and is not only anachronistic and arbitrary and capricious but also
discriminatory.
For a
copy of NetMoby, Inc.’s a Petition For Reconsideration, please contact
Robert E. Kelly, Esq., at kellylawuas@gmail.com.
