DJI has allowed its drones to fly over airports, wildfires and the White House

DJI has not allowed its drones to fly over restricted areas for over a decade. The software blocked flights near runways, natural disaster sites including wildfires, and over military and government installations, including the White House. Now the Chinese manufacturer has suddenly decided to lift these restrictions.

Image source: dji.com

The company took this measure despite the surge in mistrust of American authorities towards Chinese drones and the recent incident with a DJI UAV while fighting a forest fire in Los Angeles. The manufacturer refused to enforce “no-fly zones”, offering only to display a warning about entering it on the control panel screen – now device owners will only be restrained by common sense and fear of punishment from the authorities. DJI itself characterizes its initiative as “putting control back into the hands of drone operators.” The authorities will have to independently enforce the law using Remote ID technology – a public broadcast of the location of the drone and its operator during flight.

Last week, it became known about an incident with a Super Scooper aircraft, which was used to fight forest fires in Los Angeles, but was damaged as a result of a collision with a DJI drone – it turned out to be a model weighing less than 250 g, which does not require Remote ID to operate. and the FBI will have to identify the culprit of the incident. The manufacturer voluntarily introduced restrictions on UAV flights, but the American authorities, it seems, did not appreciate this: their rhetoric towards the Chinese company is becoming increasingly harsh, and a scenario with a ban on the import of its products into the country is no longer ruled out. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) confirmed that the agency does not require manufacturers to limit UAV flight zones.

«Over the past years, there has been significant evidence that automatic geofencing of drones, implemented using a threat-based approach, has made a significant contribution to flight safety,” former DJI global policy chief Brendan Schulman wrote on Social Media X. With the next update to the DJI Fly and DJI Pilot apps, areas previously designated as “Restricted Zones” or “No-Fly Zones” will be displayed as “Enhanced Warning Zones” and DJI will no longer determine their list independently – they will be formed on the basis of the FAA database.