Unmanned Airspace
• Kylie Bielby
The FAA is launching Phase 2 of its BEYOND program and inviting additional participants to help integrate drones into the national airspace system. The initiative will examine operations at airports, in controlled airspace and across borders as drone activity expands.
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The FAA is proposing special conditions for Skyryse’s fly-by-wire conversion of the Robinson R66, focusing on how pilots maintain awareness of control limits after conventional mechanical feedback is removed. The proposal addresses a key safety and certification challenge for helicopters using electronically mediated flight controls.
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The FAA is launching Phase 2 of its BEYOND program and inviting additional participants to help integrate drones into the national airspace system. The initiative will examine operations at airports, in controlled airspace and across borders as drone activity expands.
The Commerce Department’s civil space traffic coordination system, TraCSS, has expanded its user base for service testing but remains in a pilot phase. The department has not established a firm date for transitioning the system into full operational service.
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Police have referred seven South Korean transport ministry officials to prosecutors over alleged efforts to conceal that a localizer was unfit before the 2024 Jeju Air crash. The accident killed 179 of the 181 people aboard, making the officials’ potential accountability a central safety and oversight issue.
The United States is threatening sanctions against any country or entity that engages with Iran’s gold, digital-assets, aviation, shipping or technology industries. The measure extends economic pressure beyond Iranian oil, increasing potential compliance exposure for companies and counterparties operating across these sectors.
The FAA’s proposed use of “overpressure” to regulate supersonic flight is facing opposition from environmental groups, while also prompting concern within parts of the industry. The debate centers on whether the metric adequately captures sonic-boom impacts, despite broad support for the overall plan.
Nancy Kassebaum, the former U.S. senator who pushed through the General Aviation Revitalization Act, has died. The law reshaped product-liability exposure for general aviation manufacturers, making her a consequential figure in the sector’s regulatory and industrial history.
The Air Line Pilots Association is asking the FAA to require airlines to install secondary cockpit barriers on in-service aircraft. The proposal would extend physical cockpit-access protections beyond newly delivered airplanes, potentially creating new compliance, maintenance and retrofit-planning obligations for carriers and operators.
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