NetMoby, Inc., Files A Petition For Reconsideration of New Part 107 sUAS Rules

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.