Here Come the Drone NOTAMS

While reports of drone near-misses from airline pilots at major airports tend to be sensational, most of us believe that for small consumer-grade drones that weigh less than a pound, the safety risk is similar to wildlife strikes, which occur daily, NOTAM or no NOTAM.

Frank Bowlin

Tuesday, May 10, 2016 at 12:00 AM ET

Verified

Key Takeaways:

New "DROTAMs" are being introduced to alert pilots to drone activity in the National Airspace System, with some services like Skyvector.com offering visual overlays.
The article questions the effectiveness of DROTAMs, citing concerns about incomplete coverage from drone operators and doubts whether they will genuinely prevent UAS encounters.
There is an ongoing debate about the actual safety threat posed by small drones compared to bird strikes, and whether this added layer of NOTAMs will significantly improve safety or is simply an extra burden for pilots.

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Now that drones are in the National Airspace System, we need to work them into our flight preparation. Drone NOTAMs (“DROTAMs”?) have begun dotting the landscape, alerting us to where we can expect drones.

A routine check during a route briefing could bring up something like this, cast in typical NOTAM shorthand: “LBB AIRSPACE UAS WI AN AREA DEFINED AS .9NM RADIUS OF 333457.43N1.14707.69W (6.0NM SSE LBB) SFC-400FT AGL 1604052000-1604052100.” Larger airports, such as Atlanta, can have multiple layers of these NOTAMs, all of varying sizes.