The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and Department of Transportation proposed Sunday new regulations that remove many of the barriers to commercial use of drones for applications like photography and surveying, but they don't permit the kind of automated drone use that companies like Amazon.com are eyeing for package delivery.
Cell phone use will continue to be banned in flight for calls, but users will be permitted to keep them running in airplane mode.
Airline passengers on U.S. flights will soon be allowed to use most personal electronic devices (PEDs) during any phase of a flight, from taxiing to takeoff, climbing and landing, under expanded new rules announced Oct. 31 by the FAA.
A Federal Aviation Administration advisory committee "has concluded passengers can safely use hand-held electronic devices, including those connected to onboard Wi-Fi systems, during all portions of flights on nearly all US airliners," the Wall Street Journal reported last night.
We've been hearing rumblings that the FAA wants to start letting you use certain gadgets on airplanes through the "terrible 10,000 feet," and according to the WSJ, it's about to do just that.
A 28-member industry and government panel's draft report strongly recommended relaxing blanket rules against electronics that have been in place since 1966 due to massive changes in technology since then.
Federal authorities have dismissed concerns raised by a security consultant who last week suggested that commercial airliners were vulnerable to remote hijacking by terrorists armed with little more than a smartphone and the right killer app.
But U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg doesn’t want to take any chances, and New Jersey's senior senator has written to the U.S. secretaries of transportation and homeland security asking them to investigate the threat and how to stop it.
The Federal Aviation Administration is strongly denying a claim made at a hacker conference in Amsterdam that airplane navigation systems can be hacked in-flight using a mobile phone application and some cheap software.
THE UNITED STATES Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is taking another look at when electronic devices can be used during flight.
The FAA has asked airlines for their views on electronic device usage during flights. According to the FAA it will investigate what tests airlines conduct on devices to determine usage rules and consider establishing standards to allow electronic devices to be used at any stage of flight.
The ADS-B system that is the cornerstone of the FAA’s NextGen ATC modernization plan is at risk of serious security breaches, according to Brad Haines (aka RenderMan), a hacker and network security consultant who is worried about ADS-B vulnerabilities. Haines outlined his concerns during a presentation he gave at the recent DefCon 20 hacker conference in Las Vegas, explaining that ADS-B signals are unauthenticated and unencrypted, and “spoofing” or inserting a fake aircraft into the ADS-B system is easy.
In a House Homeland Security oversight subcommittee hearing late this week, members of Congress raised concerns over the potential security risks posed by jamming and electronic hijacking of unmanned aerial systems, and the potential use of drones by terrorists.
The hearing came as the deadline looms for the FAA to devise regulations and licensing that incorporate unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) into the national airspace. And the agency is in the process of approving six test sites for UAV operations to help prepare for the full introduction of UAVs in 2015.
