Clumsy FAA Tweet Implies That July 4th UAV Flying Was Unlawful

Over the past several years, as ANN has increased its coverage of the unmanned vehicle industry, both Hobby and Commercial, we've noted that most members of the community seem to have a strong interest at not only staying legal, but in being good at citizens about it.

Unfortunately; the FAA does not seem to have had the same experience, and a holiday message certainly cast aspersions upon them all... and worse than that, a first draft of the message (Published July 2nd... since deleted and replaced) mis-spelled 'independence.'

Over the holiday weekend, some of the July 4th holiday tweets published by the FAA seem to imply that flying a drone, any drone, over the July 4th holiday was not lawful -- and that drone pilots should leave their craft home for the holidays... It did this with a large image of a DJI Inspire working drone, set against an American flag, as the FAA’s tweet intoned, ”Happy 4th of July! Have fun and remember to leave your drone at home. #happy4th #independenceday #NoDroneZone”.

While we hope it was simply a clumsy error, more than few drone operators took the same offense that we felt... that the blanket indictment of an entire flying community, with a careless tweet implying that they could not take their drones with them during a holiday, set a bad tone for an agency that has actually done fairly well with drone issues to this point.

More to the point, it's been our experience that the great majority of hobby and commercial drone operators are aware of how they are perceived and that it's only going to take but a bad apples to make them all look pretty bad... and as a result, the great majority seem to be making an excellent effort to make sure that they are good citizens... an effort so far lost on whoever publishes tweets for the FAA.

FMI: www.faa.gov, https://twitter.com/FAANews/status/882237606242791424