Last week the FAA granted approval for UAS beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) flights at the Unmanned Aircraft System Test Site at Griffiss airport (KRME) in Rome, New York, the first segment of the adjacent 50-mile UAS corridor being built by Oneida County, Nuair, and New York state. The corridor is part of the state’s $30 million UAS investment to date.

"The drone corridor has transformed Central New York and the Mohawk Valley into a global leader of this next-generation technology while diversifying New York's economy," said governor Andrew Cuomo. To date, Northeast UAS Airspace Integration Research and the New York UAS Test Site have conducted more than 2,500 test flights since 2015 but required multiple people in the field to have a visual line of sight for the aircraft. With BVLOS approval, those observers will no longer be required.

The first segment of the UAS corridor is an eight-by-four-mile section of airspace between Griffiss International Airport and the New York State emergency preparedness training center in Oriskany. The FAA’s BVLOS approval process for the corridor took about 14 months and evaluated flight data from the test flights.