FAA releases B4UFly App for Android

Aerial Photography
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The FAA started to require all drone pilots to register their drones. They didn’t post the guidelines clearly on their website and if you are a foreigner visiting the United States, you will be confused too. Read my post about “The Drama with the FAA and their UAS/Drone Registration“. They also released an app to plan your next flight and see where you can fly and where airspace restrictions are in place. However, the B4UFLY app has only been released for iOS so far and the Android app was until now in public beta.

And yes, the drama continues for users with Android devices. After finding that the iOS app is only available for U.S. Apple Accounts, the same is true for the Android version. You will need a U.S. Google Account to download the app. On Android, it’s not that bad, because you can have multiple accounts simultaneously on your device. Try that on iOS.

If you are a foreigner visiting the U.S., you would need to create a U.S. Account and ditch the Apple App Store account you are currently using. I have to say again a “smart” move from the FAA. They think they know it all better, but they don’t. I am a bit annoyed about this.

Once you start the app, you will be greeted with their ToS, which you must acknowledge. The ToS tell you that the information could be inaccurate, and the FAA is not reliable if anything happens. Did you expect more from a government agency? I did! I was hoping this would be the go-to app if you are a drone pilot. I hope they are not the same way in manned aircraft traffic. This makes me worry a little bit.

Typically, the FAA informs about all the restrictions in the air space and will make them accessible on their website. It would be awesome if that feature were integrated into the app. If a person must manually enter it to the app’s database, we are already years behind and the information would be outdated.

Then I tried to use Planning-Mode, for planning future flights. This mode is still in early beta, what it looks like. As for location, I used the current position. At my location, it showed a bunch of heliports and other “airports”. So, I moved the map around towards where it shows no airport. If you do that, it will show you a point on the map that there is an airport, but it won’t show the 5-mile radius around the airport anymore. This makes it hard again to determine where you are safe to fly.

 

Because I was within five miles of an airport, I got warned about that by the app. The app tells me that I must contact the airport operator and the control tower, if one exists at the location. Then below it showed a small form about how high, far, and long I would like to fly. I can submit this B4UFly Data Collection form, but that does not count as “informing the airport operator and control tower”.

 

If so, that would be a great step forward, which other, similar apps don’t provide.

Loading the data, once you open the B4UFLY app, takes forever. I am not used to that, but I could live with it. So far, I am not too thrilled about the app, but let’s see what happens in the future. I hope the FAA will put some more effort into this app and develop a great app for drone operators. The design layout also needs some work, as it looks like a port from iOS.

Aerial Photography, FAA
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