The Federal Aviation Administration on December 10 granted a second round of exemptions to companies that applied to fly unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) under a special provision of the 2012 FAA reauthorization act. The agency has now granted 11 exemptions under the provision—Section 333 of the act. It reported receiving 167 total applications to date.

The FAA granted the first exemptions on September 25 to six video production companies the Motion Picture Association of America sponsored, followed by a seventh filmmaking company on October 10.

Granted exemptions in the second round were: Trimble Navigation, of Sunnyvale, Calif., to fly its UX5 flying wing for aerial surveying; Clayco, of St. Louis, to operate a Skycatch quadcopter for construction site monitoring; VDOS Global of Corvallis, Ore., to use the Aeryon SkyRanger quadcopter for flare stack inspections on 14 Shell Oil production platforms in the Gulf of Mexico; and Woolpert, of Annapolis, Md., to fly the Altavian Nova Block III fixed-wing airplane for aerial surveying over rural areas of Ohio, and a second exemption to operate the Nova Block III for aerial surveying in support of scientific research over Ship Island, Miss.

For the Trimble and Clayco operations, the FAA required that the UAS pilot-in-command have a private pilot’s license and a third-class medical certificate. The other two companies—Woolpert and VDOS—plan to use commercial rated pilots. “[T]he FAA is requiring a pilot certificate for UAS operations for two reasons, the first of which is to satisfy the statutory requirements,” the agency stated in letters of approval. “The second is because pilots holding a private pilot certificate are subject to the security screening by the Department of Homeland Security that certified airmen undergo. As previously determined by the Secretary (of Transportation), the requirement to have an airman certificate ameliorates security concerns over civil UAS operations conducted in accordance with Section 333.”

Under mounting pressure from industry and Congress, the FAA said it still plans to release a long-delayed notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) this year that will establish the regulatory basis for allowing flights of small UAS for commercial purposes, which it now generally prohibits. Margaret “Peggy” Gilligan, FAA associate administrator for Aviation Safety, told the House transportation subcommittee on December 10 that the draft legislation is undergoing “executive review.” The agency originally planned to release the NPRM in March 2011 but was stymied by privacy considerations and bureaucratic delay.