Philadelphia YouTuber faces $200,000 in penalties over drone usage

A Philadelphia YouTuber known for aerial videos is facing up to $200,000 in penalties after the federal government says he's been flying drones dangerously across the city.

[sputniksam]

Who has the highest body count? This guy in Philadelphia? Or Boeing?

[RevvedUpRy]

There's so much they could focus on cracking down on and they choose this

[xjet]

Hmmm... here's a guy flying a 249g drone who's never actually injured a third party nor damaged their property but he's being hounded by the FAA for his evil deeds -- while Boeing seem to be free to endanger the lives of thousands through shoddy safety practices. To be honest, I'd rather be hit by Michael's 249g drone than the door plug falling from a Boeing 737 Max 9. I also see what appears to be a significant upswing in the number of aircraft crashes recently (onto freeways even). Might it be that the FAA is simply trying to distract the public from the *real* safety issues plaguing aviation right now by vilifying this guy in the public spotlight?

Let's hope that the public (and a judge) aren't as easily fooled as the FAA might wish they were.

[budt]

Disney should hire this guy as a voice actor. He was born for this. Also is aerial photography is second to none. He is truly gifted and a sweet guy to boot..

[simg]

While true criminals ruling whole blocks. Sickening.

[bren]

Breaking some rules, ok fine. But 200, 000 DOLLARS ?? absolutely unhinged

[RonaldBrown]

Almost all these charges are from when he used to livestream his flights, which he quit doing years ago. And if he wasn't posting his flights to YouTube, would anybody even know he was flying?

[fjmark]

Not exactly impartial and didn’t even mention the fact that a local newspaper has written an article which exaggerates the FAA opinion. Unfortunately many people at the FAA do not understand their own Drone regulations either. and you should get your facts straight it is not a license. It is the part 1 07 certification There is no such thing as a drone license. it feels that yet again, we are subject to the news doing what they do best and sensationalising something.

[funkynerd_com]

They didn't say in the video, but how many people died from his dangerous illegal flying?

[kentao]

I’ve seen a lot of his videos. I haven’t seen him do things that I haven’t seen others do except fly into himself lol

[chrissullivan]

Any publicity is good publicity. The government sucks. Going after the little guy and not charging politicians that literally defraud us… come on …

[MrLegendra]

Philly will prosecute this but not thieves or murderers

[flintstone]

Sad because the guy has legit flying skills. Haven't seen all his videos but I'm sure he broke "some" rules. That said it feels like his defiance was met with a bit of piling on. It'd be nice to see a guy like this turn it around by getting licensed and get a job filming legally in the film industry or television. Make some money to pay off whatever proven violations he committed. It is an expensive hobby that he wanted to earn a living from and went to extremes to get attention. I have no idea what other skills the man has but he has the precision flying skills needed to create cinematic videography. Hoping the judge doesn't bury him and more importantly, that he learns something from this and something good comes to turn his life around.

[w.e.s.]

Hes done some wild stuff but breaking rules is really border line arguments. Ive watched him for 3 years and never noticed rules being broke. Hey how about the next time somebody gets ran over by a drunk driver or someone texting send them a 182000 dollar bill... maybe it will start to save lives. Fireworks r more dangerous then drones. As a community we need to support the guy bc hes hurting NOBODY!!!!

[Emuspaul]

This is "de jure" vs. "de facto, " because in fact reality, commercial real estate jobs require flying out of sight and over people and traffic all the time.

[jjmcwill]

Im a part 107 license holder and im still confused on the laws.

[BerzerkaDurk]

I'm currently a recreational drone pilot, but I'm taking my Part 107 sUAS license test next week. It is very clear that the FAA requires anyone using their drone to make money to get trained and certified. We have to learn about airspaces, weather, effects of loading on performance, etc, etc. There's no way the FAA slapped this dude with $180K in fines without going through several layers of warnings. All of Philadelphia is in Class B airspace, and he would have to get LAANC approval from air traffic control to fly there. He's flying DJI drones. DJI drones warn you of this when you fly them, so he ignored multiple layers of warnings from several sources.

The people in these comments would be singing a very different tune if this dude had crashed his 5lb drone into a windshield and caused a fatal accident, or lacerated the shit out of a little girl's face, or a hundred other things. Even commercial drone pilots aren't allowed to fly over groups of people.

[redbaronfpv]

He acts surprised about this. This man was warned by the FAA several time over the YEARS and he made the decision to keep doing it over and over. He brought this on himself. All he had to do is stop when he was warned and he would not have been find.

[bthomp]

Why does he have thousands of dollars to spend on drones if he’s on welfare? I don’t want my hard earned money going to buy someone else’s drones. I only have one and I work and make my own money.

[airadaimagery]

They’re trying to stop people like this, who actually have skills in operating a drone, just to give way to the big companies like Amazon fedex and UPS. They claim everything he’s doing is unsafe, at the same time trying deploy hundreds of delivery drones in the skies carrying packages over the same routes. Meanwhile, Boing is losing parts off their planes and they’re landing in peoples yards. Crazy times we live in.