Drone Pilots August 2018
Here are some statistics on drone pilot activity in the US. I obtained all the data from publicly available sources on faa.gov. If this is interesting or you want more information, get in touch.
Remote Pilot Certifications
As of August 28 2018, there are at least 61,613 pilots with a part 107 UAS (drone) certificate. I say at least because the FAA allows pilots to exclude themselves from the public database, in which case they do not show up in the data set.
Per this press release, the FAA hit 100,000 certificates about a month ago, so a first order estimate puts the number of pilots who don't exclude themselves around 60%.
The FAA publishes new data every month, so in a couple days there will be more available. This is the first month I have obtained data, so I don't have anything to compare to yet.
Part 107 Waivers
As of today, there have been 1,999 waivers granted to 1,854 individuals at 1,544 companies.
The first waiver to expire does so November of this year. Breakdown of waivers granted by type:
| Regulation | Type | Count |
|---|---|---|
| 107.29 | Daylight operation | 1829 |
| 107.41 | Operation in controlled airspace | 106 |
| 107.35 | Operation of multiple small unmanned aircraft | 37 |
| 107.31 | Visual line of sight aircraft operation | 22 |
| 107.51(b) | Altitude | 17 |
| 107.39 | Operation over human beings | 12 |
| 107.33(b) | Visual observer | 12 |
| 107.51(d) | Minimum distance from clouds | 10 |
| 107.51(c) | Minimum visibility | 10 |
| 107.33(c)(2) | Visual observer | 6 |
| 107.25(b) | Operation from a moving vehicle or aircraft | 4 |
| 107.51(a) | Maximum groundspeed | 1 |
| 107.39(a) | Operation over human beings | 1 |
| 107.33(c) | Visual observer | 1 |
The number of total waivers granted over time:
