9. Drones
The rise of drones is arguably the single biggest story of the year, and it likely will be next year as well. The meat of the movement is a giant consumer fascination with little polycopter things with cameras attached. Millions of drones are now in use. But the importance of the trend has more to do with three things: safety, since drones share the skies with planes filled with people; privacy, since drones occupy the airspace immediately above people’s backyard swimming pools; and regulation, since drones will apparently play a big role in commerce in the future, though just how that will work has yet to be determined. With all this in mind, Congress and the FAA have been busy writing laws to regulate drones, and the courts have been busy striking down many of those regs. The latest FAA funding bill, passed in October, puts the weight of law behind a number of FAA regulations while layering regulations onto the model aviation community. Bottom line, drones are hugely disruptive, and none of this has played out yet. Though it will.
