Eventually, property owners’ rights were limited to what a property owner could reasonably use, and generally, airspace 500 feet above ground level is considered navigable airspace, regulated by the FAA. The government enacted legislation that effectively adjusted property owners’ airspace rights in order to accommodate airplanes. As the aviation industry grew and expanded, however, the government decided to regulate airspace. When the first planes were invented and flown, therefore, any time they flew over neighboring property without permission they were technically trespassing on that property by flying in the airspace, or vertical curtilage, of that property.
This article examines the intersection of property owners’ rights and drone operators’ rights, and highlights some of the wide-ranging societal repercussions that may result from increased commercial and governmental drone usage in the coming years.īefore airplanes became a common mode of transportation, a property owner’s rights were said to extend ad coelom et ad inferos, or up to heaven and down to hell. Beyond package delivery, and beyond use by hobbyists, drones can and will be used in the coming years for land surveillance, monitoring traffic and weather conditions, crowd control, search and rescue operations, disaster response, border patrol, law enforcement, and much more.Īll of these applications, however, are contingent on drones being able to fly freely through airspace, which not only implicates Federal Aviation Administration law and regulations, but also implicates real property owners’ rights. This delivery, part of an Amazon test program, is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to practical applications of unmanned aircraft systems (“UAS”), commonly referred to as drones or unmanned aerial vehicles (“UAVs”).
On December 7, 2016, Amazon delivered its first package via a fully autonomous drone delivery system.
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