America's First Commercial Drone Test Site Is Now Open for Business

The first of at least six commercial drone test sites has officially opened in North Dakota, the Federal Aviation Administration announced Monday.

The site opens the door for officially-sanctioned FAA drone testing, which is the first step towards starting a government-approved drone company. Companies that use drones have been operating in legal limbo over the past few years, a situation that became a little more clear last month, when a federal judge ruled that there are no official laws against operating a drone for profit. That’s not the way the FAA has looked at it, however, as the agency still insists that the commercial use of a drone without FAA permission is illegal.

The FAA’s test sites have always been part of its plan to officially integrate drones into American skies. The plan, according to Larry Brinker, who will operate a test site in Rome, New York, is to allow anyone to test their drones at the sites. It’s still unclear how much testing any given company will need in order to earn a certificate of authorization to fly the drone from the FAA.

North Dakota's sites will be spread between North Dakota State University and the Sullys Hill National Game Preserve near the Canadian border. The other states with test sites are New York, Alaska, Nevada, Texas, and Virginia. No opening date has been set for those sites, though Brinker told me he had hoped to open sometime in May as well.

This is big for a couple reasons—while small drone companies can operate in legal limbo without worrying too much about incurring the FAA’s wrath, larger companies, such as Amazon and UPS, are unlikely to ignore the FAA’s mandate. Brinker told me earlier this year that he hopes they’ll begin to certify companies by the end of the year.

According to a press release, the North Dakota site plans to have its first flights beginning the week of May 5, and the North Dakota Department of Commerce will be the first entity to begin testing there (government agencies and nonprofit groups also have to go through the COA process, though traditionally it has been easier for government groups to get permission).

The FAA is quick to point out that the North Dakota site is opening nearly three months ahead of the deadline that Congress set for it, but that’s a bit misleading—the FAA has missed nearly every deadline for drone integration thus far, and the naming of the test sites itself came more than a year late. In any case, this is a serious step forward, and we should learn some more about how the FAA actually plans to regulate the things based on how this first site operates.