Will White House crash stall drone acceptance?

On a calm and sunny afternoon at the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, N.C., Nate Hentz of Raleigh brings his 3-pound quad-copter drone in for a soft landing after flying it over George Vanderbilt’s famous home. Hentz pulls out his smartphone and looks at the beautiful, high-definition aerial photographs he took with the remotely controlled GoPro camera suspended underneath his DJI Phantom 2 Vision Plus drone. Depending on the model, Hentz said, drones like his can cost between $700 and $2,800.

“It’s definitely not a toy,” Hentz said.

Drones are sophisticated, little, remote-controlled aircraft, but their prices are becoming increasingly affordable. More and more people are buying and flying drones as hobbyists, including the man flying the drone that crashed on the grounds of the White House on Monday morning. The crash resulted in a White House lockdown until the Secret Service determined the craft posed no danger.

“Initial indications are that this incident occurred as a result of recreational use of the device,” the Secret Service said in a statement. The pilot turned himself in and cooperated with the investigation.

Interest in drones is widespread. Farmers want them to monitor crops. Industrial companies want them to inspect hard-to-reach places. And news organizations say drones can augment their reporting.

But the nation’s air-safety regulator, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), is struggling to catch up to this expanding trend with appropriate regulations.

“If you buy a hobby drone, the FAA says that’s 100 percent legal,” said Sally French, the social media editor for MarketWatch who writes the blog Drone Girl. “So if you got a drone for Christmas and you want to take family pictures you’re in the clear.” But drone flights for commercial purposes must have a Section 333 exemption, a permit that takes months to get from the FAA.

“It’s really unclear who’s enforcing it, actually,” French said. “Unless your city has specific laws, then your local law-enforcement agency can’t actually enforce it.”

So far, the FAA has issued only about 15 Section 333 exemptions. The most recent went to an Arizona realtor and, earlier this month, to CNN. Not only does getting an exemption take a while, but applicants must also meet stringent criteria, including possessing a valid private pilot license. And safety is a concern. Incidents reported by local law enforcement to the FAA have grown to more than 40 per month. While there have been no reported deaths involving drones, last year the FAA logged almost 200 cases of drones flying near other aircraft, buildings, or crowds.

FAA guidelines require amateur drone operators to fly below 400 feet, always within sight, and never closer than five miles to an airport. But even simple commercial drones such as Hentz’s DJI Phantom Vision Plus have autonomous GPS guidance, which allows the operator to program waypoints at different altitudes so the drone can fly itself even if the operator loses visual contact with it.

Safety isn’t the only concern many people have about drones. There’s also the privacy issue. Last month, retiring Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.V., introduced legislation to address potential privacy violations by commercial drones.

“People come up to me, and they say ‘are you trying to spy on an ex-boyfriend?’ No! That’s ridiculous!” French said. She acknowledges the public’s fear of drones’ invading their privacy, but she thinks current drones are too big and too loud to be good spying tools: “It would be pretty impossible actually to go on with your daily life and not know there’s a drone around.”

When French looks at the innovation both in the design and the potential uses of drones, it reminds her of the early days of the internet: “When the internet first came, people were like, ‘Why do I need this? My life is fine without the internet.’ And now I cannot even function in my daily life without the internet. And I think drones may go that route also.”

Listen to Michael Cochrane’s report on drones on The World and Everything in It.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.