Days after police shot down a drone flying over the Dakota Access Pipeline protest area, the Federal Aviation Administration is temporarily restricting most aircraft from the area. South Dakota Public Broadcasting’s Gary Ellenbolt reports the move is being made to allow official aircraft to have unlimited access to the airspace.
The F-A-A is keeping most air traffic from a 14-mile area near the various protest campsites. That does not apply to aircraft being used in official police activities. South Dakota State University Aviation professor Cody Christensen says part of the restriction may be protection for airplanes operating over the protesters.
“It could be something like that—it could be lasers, it could be UAS or drones in this case. It could be just trying to keep additional aircraft out of the airspace. They do the same type of temporary flight restriction, or NOTAM, as we call it, around forest fires, or any type of natural disaster area where they’re trying to get emergency aircraft in the area.”
Christensen says there’s no excuse available for pilots who unwittingly fly over restricted airspace.
“Every pilot, before they take off, has to have all available information about the flight—and they should check their reporting requirements over each area. So part of that would either be calling Flight Service Station and getting that report, or if they were on an Instrument Flight plan and currently talking to Air Traffic Control, Air Traffic Control would help to keep them out of that airspace. Along that same line, a lot of the GPS technology that we use will superimpose that NOTAM or TFR notification right on our map.”
The F-A-A restriction starts at Cannon Ball, North Dakota, and works north. The area remains restricted until November Fifth.