Extra: Deliveries, Taxis, War ... And The Future Of Drones
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They direct the Federal Aviation Administration to expedite new rules for how and where unmanned aircraft systems can fly. Among other things, they'd better integrate drones into air traffic and would no longer require operators to maintain a visual line of sight. Michael Helander is the founder and CEO of the drone operations management company AirspaceLink. He was on the White House call about the executive orders. He spoke about the new rules and the future of UAS flight, including package deliveries and flying cars.

Sometimes we have to cut conversations down to hit the regular weekday rundown podcast here. We can just let you hear the whole thing. Thanks for listening to and following the rundown. And now Michael Helander on the Fox News Rundown Extra. Michael Helander, thanks for coming on the Fox News Rundown. So you're on this White House call about executive orders, about drones. You call it the most significant advancement for drone operations in U.S. history. We can go through it all, but what's one big thing? Yeah.

The ability to have drones fly beyond visual line of sight, as you could probably remember back in 2013 when Amazon had that commercial where they went and had a package being delivered. There's really been a lot of regulations and safety issues with doing that. And this executive order, that's one of the things it's going to allow to do to start to do those advanced operations here in the United States. So right now, with some exceptions, I understand, you have to see your drone with the naked eye.

Yes. Yes. That is the current rules for commercial operations, that your eyes are the radar. You are the radar. You need to know if there's a helicopter coming, and that's the way it's designed in airspace today for drones. So you can't, when this gets lifted eventually, you can't just tell the drone, okay, you're at point A, go to point B. You're going to have to have some sort of evasive technology? Yeah.

Yeah, and that's part of the executive order. There's multiple things in it. It is putting those sets of rules of how to fly from A to B. It's also safeguarding and monitoring the airspace, giving public safety the tools to understand who's who in the airspace, and putting in those detect and avoid for those drones. So you're not just going to be able to sign up and start flying beyond visual line of sight. There's going to be an onboarding process. You're going to have to certify your system. But at least there's a process versus...

these one-off waivers that people are getting where there will actually be a process and everyone will be flying under the same rules. Yeah, and part of this is where you guys come in and companies like you come in. Explain what Aerospace Link is and what you're authorized to do.

So, ThinQ AirspaceLink is the air traffic control for drones. We monitor the airspace. We safely integrate drones into the U.S. airspace. We're authorized by the FAA to support 400 feet and below drones that are 55 pounds or less. And we support recreational pilots all the way up to Department of Defense drones in some of our advanced systems.

So we manage that that slice of air to support that safe integration. And as these new rules come online, they will be used for our platform as well. So correct me if I'm wrong. So so say the town of Omaha, the city of Omaha could hire you and then they use their software, their police department, for example, can log on and figure out, OK, what's this thing hovering over here? I want to know what it is.

Yeah, so our advanced systems, you're right, they can install a sensor that picks up what's called remote ID. All drones here in the United States are required to broadcast their location information and where the person standing that's controlling it. And we have a system that can do that where you can pull in that data on your smartphone or during a large event, especially baseball games. Recently, there's been a lot of drones flying in and you can see where that drone is and where the pilot is standing as well.

So I guess what this will do is if you get rid of the line of sight requirement, it really opens up mass commercial use. Now Amazon and Walmart and whoever it is can just have fleets and fleets flying around delivering things.

Yes, yes. And doing linear inspections and drones as a first responder and search and rescue and swift water rescue. There's a shore to ship deliveries. Just a lot of really neat thing this opens up. Yeah, flying organs around. Yes, flying organs. The package delivery, which is what a lot of people are going to be could be affected by.

Is there talk about how this is possibly going to work? Let's say you live in an apartment building in a city or in a house in a congested town. What does that infrastructure look like? You can't just have drones aren't going to be able to just land in this drop packages on rooftops or in backyards, I assume. Is the idea is that there would be drop boxes or sort of common pickup points or what?

We see it starting in several locations. One is designated ports, designated locations within a community or within an apartment building. There will be new technology that will come in that we are seeing developers start to build into their designs

drone ports and ways to get packages within their buildings. So this is exciting as it's going to bring in a bunch of different ideas of how to have multimodal solutions for drones. Yeah, so at some point, I guess just our infrastructure will contain things that we didn't even know we needed. And that'll just be commonplace.

Yeah, it's exciting for people at charging stations. Where are these drones going to land and charge? How do we maintain them? Job creation is going to be interesting. Executive order also includes supporting U.S. manufacturing of drones. And that's an area that we're pretty weak in the United States. So being able to build these more advanced drones, these are going to be different than the ones that we're using now.

for taking pictures in our kids. These are going to be more advanced, much more expensive systems that are going to create different types of jobs here in the U.S. One more thought on the deliveries that just popped into my head. If you live in a city or a city-ish place, you can now get things delivered pretty quickly. Same-day delivery is very common, if not within the hour. If you live in someplace very, very rural, that's impossible, but this could make it more possible. Right.

The neat part is the airspace links been already supporting these one off deliveries. We have a supporting one in North Dakota takes about two and a half hours to get to the hospital, especially in the winters. It's really tough. And we have a drone flying or supporting a drone that's flying from the hospital to that city.

It takes about 30 minutes. So that's a great example. Rural deliveries, especially in hard hit areas, whether it be weather or tornadoes or whatever that might be, will still have ways to get things to them. Feeling a little stalled in the bedroom? Through HIMSS,

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Now, these new rules, when they happen, well, first of all, it's not a finger snap, right? These executive orders. It expedites a process. What's the timeline?

So there is a 30-day, 60-day, a 90-day, 120-day, 240-day timeline for multiple threads of this. That is having the rulemaking out for draft within 30 days for BB loss. Then there's a, I think, about a 30-day timeline for public comment.

on what do you like or not like about it. And then it goes back into the FAA for final rulemaking. And then within 240 days, which would be January, February of 2026, it will come out as a final rule.

Now, you just won't start flying beyond visual line of sight and at mass scale. There'll be quite a few things for companies that will need to onboard. It may take months or even years to onboard into these safety systems. But the timeline is set, and we'll have some clarity on what that looks like. And that's great for investment. All of that, we start to have a timeline for all of this-- securing our airspace, monitoring the airspace, supporting the Department of Defense regions, like what was happening in New Jersey.

All of that is on these pretty aggressive timelines that we'll be monitoring. Yeah, and now those timelines are there. I imagine some checkbooks are going to be opening up. Yes. Now, these new rules also, not just packages, they opened up the idea of air taxis, which you think could happen relatively soon, right? Well, first of all, who's the customer for that?

Who's doing the flying? Are there new companies popping up to maybe handle that? Or could it look like currently traditional rideshare companies getting into that space? Yeah, so there's some companies like Wisk and...

different groups that are doing air taxis that are bringing those to the market that will have investors from some of the big three automakers and some of the airline companies are all investing in these startups that are doing these air taxis. At Airspace Link, our focus over the next year is to make sure that we're safeguarding the low altitude so I feel comfortable stepping onto a unbanned aircraft taxi route

and no drone's going to run into me yeah so that that is our number one thing so as we get that completed and and um safer the taxis will come quickly behind that they'll leverage a lot of the technology being installed but that's just another uh barrier out of the way is making sure we have these drones under control i mean look michael there are people there are going to be people that in their lifetime are going to say i'm never setting foot uh in a driverless car

On the ground, much less, you know, something in the air, there's going to be a lot of fear about flying, which I'm sure you're going to tell me, look, it's safer than driving. But there's going to be a lot of reluctance there. And let's and something is going to go wrong. That's going to be high profile that could set the whole thing back. There could be and there will be at some point. It's just like.

The amount of accidents that happen in a vehicle today per day is astonishing, but we're used to it. Aviation has such a high safety standard and the FAA is still keeping even these small drones that we're flying have a very high standard of probability. There has not been a drone that has killed anyone, I think, in the world as of yet.

of this small drone. So that's a very high safety standard. As we get into air taxis, it is, that level is 10 to the seventh probability, some of a crashing. But you're right, the first crash or incident will be a barrier to that, but the safety standards are very high here in the United States.

Yeah. Well, let's make clear lots of drones have done lots of killing over the last few years, but we're not talking about that. We're not talking about those. Civilian, how about that? Right. We're not talking about those kind of drones. I live in the civilian securing world, not the warfighter side. Yeah.

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The Venmo MasterCard is issued by the Bancorp Bank, and a pursuant to license by MasterCard International Incorporated card may be used everywhere MasterCard is accepted. Venmo purchase restrictions apply. How about not just taxis, and this may be beyond your scope, or maybe it's not, but not just taxis, but the air being used, like roads, period. Could someday cars just use the sky instead of or in addition to roads? I mean, by the crow flies, obviously, you know, faster.

Yeah. You've seen the Jetsonian or Jetsons. It is totally possible. You know, it's hard to stretch our minds that far, but it's hard to believe that, you know, the first flights were just over 100 years ago or 100. So all within 100 years, how far we come in aviation, it is going to be hard to stretch, but there is going to be a process. And with air traffic control modernization, you

with ai with all this technology it is going to be extremely safe to start to have that type of capability and you mentioned people not wanting to get into a autonomous vehicle uh you're right

but we are seeing a different i i went in the waymo for my first time two years ago i was blown away how amazing it was i had multiple rides in that but i was definitely nervous that first time and then once i had done it i told all my friends my parents went in it so there's that there's going to be that barrier we're going to have along with any of this new technology but it is coming pretty fast now and we have some visibility and

on those timelines. Yeah, I imagine if I haven't been in one, but I imagine the first time that thing breaks, you may, you know, there may be a sharp intake of breath and wonder if it's actually going to happen. Yeah, yeah, it was wild. But again, now I'm so comfortable. I mean, look at what it's doing. And you're right. We're going to have an incident in that type of interface as well. These orders do not ban Chinese drones. That was the rumor going in. I assume that that was

discouraged by police departments and others who really who use these well-made and relatively cheap Chinese drones. But there is a goal in these orders to encourage U.S. manufacturing and do more screening of Chinese made drones. Explain all that part.

Yeah, we were expecting something as well. We didn't know what it would be. We had a hunch. We still think it will come. Not a full ban, but there will be a way maybe over five years for the U.S. to catch up. They are, like you said, DGIs are lower cost, high quality. They have 76% of the U.S. market.

Our U.S. manufacturers are just coming online. Supply chains are an issue, batteries, things like that. So we're going to need time to start to get those things in place. And over the next 30 and 60 days, they will start to put a plan in place to figure out how to do that. A lot of these are working in the background, but they'll be brought to life, whether it be incentives for U.S. companies to manufacture here. You mentioned the height restrictions, 400 feet or lower. How do you regulate –

privacy concerns at that height. You know, when people, when planes fly over, I'm not concerned about anybody in that plane looking into my backyard or looking into my window. And I guess, you know, these drains, the drones aren't meant to be, you know, sort of hovering, but how do we regulate that? Yes. So this is a very big friction point. As you can imagine, airspace link is right in the middle. We, we sit between,

the FAA and federal rules and regulations and state and local governments and cities and city council and the residents. And, you know, we've cleaned up a bit of who has jurisdiction over what. Today is the FAA. As soon as the drone is in the air, it is managed by the FAA rules and regulations. But what you can start to do is cities can start to put takeoff and landing ordinances with intent.

and you can start to tie some of their existing ordinance whether there's a privacy rule things like that to that and that is what's happening in some of these um executive orders a lot of that federal rules and regulations are starting to give them tools to start to support who's flying where and then tying that to uh whether they can you know give them a ticket for a privacy issue

the other big thing is we're in we're in installing uh what we call transparency websites for cities when they start to use drones as a first responder they're they're now just putting their flights on there so people can see was it a police drone or is that a you know little johnny's drone so starting to put some of these tools in place uh for cities to get prepared put in the ordinances that might support that

put in transparency websites, communicate with your community. We're actually seeing a lot of cities that are installing drone systems that a lot of the kids are becoming pilots and flying as interns within some of these groups, so creating jobs. And that seems to be paving the way into privacy. But that hurdle seems to be coming down over the past five years. That transparency, I guess, will be

important considering the you know the freak outs uh in New Jersey and some other states last year with all the drones over overhead um but look nevertheless you're among those that say just you know get used to it in five years there's going to be just drones all over the place there's a good chance and you would be amazed at how many are out there today the amount of drones we monitor in a day I'll see about 30 000 airspace checks per day within our system

where they're checking the airspace, where they're creating operations. You see roof inspections. You just see a lot of real, like we don't know the details. We just know that someone just asked for authorization to fly in this area and you can see their pattern or their flight plan. And it's really interesting when people, chicken farmers keeping hawks away, counting deer with thermal cameras, just a lot of really neat use cases with these drones.

An exciting time for Michael Helander, founder and CEO of Airspace Think. Michael, good to talk to you. Thank you. Great to talk to you. Thank you. You've been listening to the Fox News Rundown. And now, stay up to date by subscribing to this podcast at foxnewspodcasts.com. Listen ad-free on Fox News Podcasts Plus on Apple Podcasts. And Prime members can listen to the show ad-free on Amazon Music. And for up-to-the-minute news, go to foxnews.com.

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