My former employer’s job descriptions all had an extra line at the end: “Other duties as assigned.” This of course is necessary as technology changes, so that the company can incorporate new tasks or roles as the job transmogrifies. When I started in cable, the headend was full of satellite receivers, single-channel modulators, video tape players… and digital cable was a mysterious black box. When I left digital video was the only video, it entered and left the headend as a pre-processed chunk via a fiber optic network, and most of the broadband network was allocated to Internet service, not “cable TV.” The job description still referred to satellite feeds and video quality standards, irrelevant to my day to day activities. Nearly everything I did was “other duties as assigned.”
There’s a debate going on in the drone community. It’s not a verbal back and forth, it is playing out in the market. The topic of the time is “Are drone pilots specialists or tool users?” And depending on when you got into the business your opinion might be radically different from mine, and what industry and governments want.
See, there’s a constant shortage of labor in the United States. Not because there’s a shortage of workers, but because workers are expensive. They’re hard to hire, hard to fire and there’s a ton of expensive regulatory compliance around them. And post-COVID the wage scale has reset upward. So you want to get your money’s worth. Preferably by seeing how much you can get them to do and shift them around easily when conditions require it. That’s ok, but it leads to a problem…
Pilots are what Alton Brown would call a “unitasker.” They do one thing, very well. That’s what many businesses want for departments, but not for workers. There’s a host of ever changing rules and recommendations for remote pilots to keep track of, there’s airspace requirements, certifications to keep current, there’s aircraft maintenance, and there’s Friday Fly-day scheduled practice and training days. But to businesses, they only do one thing: Fly aircraft. There has to be enough work to keep pilots busy, and it needs to be geographically practical if drones are going to become routine in the workplace. And there’s the problem. As businesses figure out what to do with drones, such as roof inspections, there has to be enough need to cover the $30/hr plus benefits and gear to make it valuable. That’s a big chicken and egg dilemma.
When labor is cheap, or there’s a lot of tasks that require drones, it’s much easier to create a dedicated drone department. Or to add a drone pilot to the survey crew. In this scenario the aircraft can be more complicated and less automated. Complex mission checklists are the norm. Pilots need to be able to react to any situation to insure safety. It is a talent. Most industry veterans fall into this category, only because early drones were modified R/C aircraft and often hand built with components that weren’t constructed to withstand the rigors of commerical flight. Experience was their flight instructor. Because the potential uses for drones were limited by technology, so was the labor pool.
As I said, most businesses want multitaskers. Jacks of all trades, masters of some. What you don’t master can be trained into you well enough to get through the day. I remember conversations with our marketing guy, who could never figure out why techs didn’t do more upselling customers when they were installing new services. To him, that should have been a no-effort way to get a little extra cash in the paycheck. And if you had his bubbly personality I’m sure it would be. The techs saw it very differently. They saw it as more work in their already busy day, and outside of their comfort zone at that. When I was on an install, if a customer asked about a channel (usually why it wasn’t authorized), I’d upsell them to the package that included it, but I just gave the commission to the dispatcher adding the package to the billing system. Because to me, they did all the work. Protip: always treat your dispatchers well. To the marketing guy, upselling was just another duty as assigned.
We’re seeing more uses for drones. Inspection, construction and agriculture have embraced the drone as a force multiplier that can save time and supply much more high quality data to decision makers. An engineer inspecting a bridge no longer needs to repel down the side to check for spalling concrete, just fly up and have a look. Except that flying around infrastructure is a complex environment, especially if there’s a breeze. That manually controlled drone that depends on a clear view of the GPS satellite network for stability becomes a twitchy unstable aircraft under a bridge. But like any problem, engineers came up with solutions and companies like Skydio are doing great business selling their tools to industry. These drones are easy to fly, highly automated and exponentially safer. They “fly themeselves.”
A few years ago I got solar panels installed. The salesperson wanted to get a picture of my roof, and pulled out his Mavic Mini. This brought up a discussion about drones and I asked him if he had his part 107. “Oh, this is under 250 grams, so it’s ok.” I explained that the 250g rules were only for recreational flying, not commerical. This was a complete surprise to him. I stressed that it was very important he get his part 107 certification, and he agreed. Drones that are tools aren’t exempt from FAA regulation.
FAA pilot licensing is very different than your state driver’s license. It is only good for a limited time, then it has to be renewed. The rules around flying change constantly. It is the responsibility of the pilot to know the rules. While the FAA isn’t performing check rides and inspecting log books (yet), if there’s an incident there will be an investigation. If the pilot was in violation what will the company do? What department will be responsible for safe operation of the aircraft? As drone operations increase at what point will it make sense to incorporate drone procedures into training programs? These questions aren’t being addressed by the industry, since drones are still pretty rare in the workplace. The big users of small drones today are government entities such as departments of transporation and first responders (and increasingly, militaries), and they have a fairly robust training and safety culture due to the nature of their work. But what about my solar sales associate? The most dangerous task he performs is driving, and that’s something everyone takes for granted. The risks of flying a Mavic Mini around a residental neighborhood are very low, and even if it crashed it almost certainly wouldn’t break anything. But the FAA says the same rules that apply to it also apply to a 54.9 lb fixed wing VTOL:
The next few months will see the release of a new chapter in small UAVs and aviation in general: 14 CFR part 108. This is the holy grail of the small drone world: rules for beyond visual line of sight (VBLOS) operation. The proposed regulation will specify airframe certification, define operational boundries and include practical aviator certification. This may well be the answer to my initial question of “Are drones are tools or talent?” Perhaps part 107 drones are tools and part 108 drones are talent. Much of the equipment will be the same, but the mission will be the deciding factor. And who is doing the flying.