The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a five-year FAA reauthorization bill by a vote of 393-13 on April 27. A five-year reauthorization would provide long-term funding stability for the FAA, compared to the short-term 12 and six-month extensions that have been passed in recent years. The Senate hopes to pass its reauthorization bill soon so a final bill can be signed by the president before the August recess. The current FAA extension expires Sept. 30. 

“The bill is critical to our economy, to millions of Americans who work in aviation and to hundreds of millions of Americans who use the system every year. H.R. 4 authorizes FAA programs through FY 2023. This is a long-term bill—something that is overdue,” said Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Bill Shuster (R-PA).

“Too often, our aviation programs face short-term extensions, CRs, and threats of government shutdowns. We are now operating on the 5th extension of the last long-term FAA law—which was signed on Feb. 14, 2012. And before that bill was signed into law, Congress passed 23 short-term extensions. That is an incredible amount of uncertainty for programs that rely on long-term stability.”

The bill contains language that would make changes to the marking of towers in rural areas between 50 and 200 vertical feet and an above-ground base up to 10 feet feet in diameter. In 2016 NAAA was successful in urging Congress to enact law requiring the marking and logging of such towers into a database. The bill that passed the House last week would allow communication towers that meet the 2016 requirements to be marked or placed into a database but they would not be required to do both. MET towers would still be required to be both marked and put in a database. NAAA is working to amend the bill either in the Senate or if and when it goes to conference to make sure future towers, whether communications or METs, must be both marked and logged into a database, but the telecommunications industry is fighting this approach. 

Well over 100 amendments were added to the original bill, most of them regarding commercial airline safety after the high-profile Southwest airlines accident in April.

One amendment to the bill would revamp the “special rules for model aircraft.” Model aircraft, which these days usually means UAVs, cannot be regulated by the FAA under current law. This amendment would change the definition of “model aircraft” greatly narrowing it to only include hobbyists operating in a safe manner. Because of this change, many more UAS would be under the authority of the FAA.

The amendment, offered by Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR), would define hobbyist as someone operating a UAS under the guidelines of a community-based organization, such at the Academy of Model Aeronautics, and is only flying the UAS within visual line of sight. It would also require the UAS to be registered, and for the operator to pass an aeronautical knowledge test administered by the FAA.