Building Aerial Drone Highways: Challenges from Technical Standards to Public Trust

As industries and governments seek to support growing drone operations with dedicated flight corridors, the sky is presenting opportunities for innovation. Such unmanned aircraft system (UAS) corridors—which can be thought of as aerial lanes—promise transformative applications for cities. However, the path to integrating drone operations with manned aircraft still faces a range of challenges, including safety, regulation, and public acceptance.

Building an air traffic network requires collaboration among multiple parties, including local and state governments, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), private companies, and other participants in the drone ecosystem.

Michael Blades, Vice President of Aerospace, Defense, and Security at Frost & Sullivan, noted that these collaborations face two types of challenges: technical and regulatory.

Establishing standards and building networks

Manned aircraft have traditionally operated on the principle of "see and avoid" other aircraft, which drones are not yet capable of doing. The FAA is working with industry stakeholders to research reliable detect-and-avoid (DAA) technology to enable more complex drone operations and allow them to integrate with manned operations.

Blades explained: "There are logistical challenges, especially in terms of the infrastructure needed to support autonomous cargo and manned drone fleets after the industry can scale up production and obtain regulatory approval to meet market demand." He also noted that there are several regulatory challenges in both operations and drone airworthiness certification. Blades stated that rulemaking needs to—or should—advance at the international level so that all approved aircraft can operate globally, just as the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) currently does for global air traffic.

Among these participants, the most important will be providers of unmanned traffic management (UTM) services, which develop application programming interfaces (APIs) that connect drones and pilots to digital airspace maps and real-time navigation services.

London-based Altitude Angel is one such company, and its founder and CEO Richard Parker said the company's goal is to create the infrastructure that integrates drone traffic into the airspace. He said: "A drone flying 20 miles will fly over infrastructure owned by different parties and may cross controlled airspace containing different restrictions and policies. As it develops, that drone operator may need permission from many different parties, and sequencing those permissions can be difficult—that's where we help with these permission chains."

Parker said stakeholders are likely to begin agreeing on routes within existing corridors—an approach that is also closely tied to cost. "Building entirely new infrastructure is expensive, while utilizing existing corridors is an extremely low-cost option."

Another complicating factor is that drones need to quickly respond to aircraft such as air ambulances or police helicopters, which may fly very low—right in the airspace where drones operate—and can land where needed without filing a flight plan, unlike commercial aircraft.

Parker pointed out: "Suppose you solve all these problems—great applications, great integration, great visibility, cost issues—you still lack a platform that ties everything together. That platform needs to standardize data from different sources, provide visibility, and offer navigation services to understand what is detected and react to those situations, ensuring the safety of drones and everyone on the ground."

Safety and data relevance

The FAA said it is already using UAS test sites to test operations and facilitate routine drone operations in specific areas. Currently, operators within visual line of sight can use the Low Altitude Authorization and Notification Capability (LAANC) to request authorization for operations in most low-altitude controlled airspace near airports.

An FAA spokesperson explained in an email statement that the regulator is focusing on the desired safety performance of drones, rather than prescribing the exact detailed design needed to meet that safety expectation as in the past. "Performance-based regulations set the level of operational safety and performance that must be achieved through aircraft design," the spokesperson explained. "This allows for continued innovation while meeting overall safety and operational requirements, and permits multiple innovative designs to demonstrate compliance with the intent of the safety regulations."

The spokesperson clarified that the FAA is focused on the challenge of integrating UAS into the National Airspace System, rather than establishing dedicated drone corridors.

NASA is also a government stakeholder in this process. Sandy Lozito, head of the Aviation Systems Division at Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, said: "We are working to advance the urban air mobility market within government and industry, including local governments. Cities are very concerned about safety data, privacy issues, and noise issues—these are the things they really care about." Lozito said one of NASA's challenges is determining data standards for how to obtain, use, and provide data, but she noted that multiple discussions with local governments show strong interest and enthusiasm for the benefits of advanced drone infrastructure. "We need to get many partners working together and achieve data sharing," she said. "One thing we think would help is if a party—NASA or another—develops data standards, so people don't feel they have to create their own."

Her colleague Ken Freeman, a safety airspace project engineer at NASA Ames Research Center, echoed that view, saying local governments are trying to figure out how to work with the FAA to build drone corridors. "From an industry perspective, there must be a business case and strong profit potential," he said. "Access to data when needed will be crucial." Freeman envisions a wide range of use cases, from rapid delivery of medical supplies to air taxis capable of carrying a family of four. "Anything that gets cars off the road is essentially more efficient," he said. "Even if it's just 5% to 10%, if we can shift that portion of traffic from a two-dimensional transportation system to a three-dimensional one, we can speed up ground vehicles. Gaining public trust will take time, but the technical part is no longer the challenge."

Winning public support

As Freeman pointed out, public acceptance will be a key aspect of any successful drone highway development plan. While the large-scale deployment of drones could fundamentally change how we work and live, innovation will be hindered if the public is unwilling to embrace this new technology.

Gartner Senior Research Director Pedro Pacheco said issues such as noise and privacy must be addressed openly, along with ongoing safety and security concerns. "Concerns about privacy among certain segments of the population will grow, such as designating privacy zones and low-noise areas, and specific goals must be set in this regard, such as not allowing drones to fly during certain times of the day," he said. Pacheco cited a survey conducted in June 2020 by the Technical University of Berlin and the nonprofit organization Wissenschaft im Dialog, which showed that a majority of Germans oppose the use of air taxis and delivery drones, except for medical purposes.

He said the key is to start testing the technology and refining it continuously, identifying so-called "edge cases" that consider everything from weather and wind speed to social perspectives. "Whenever new technology enters the market and there is public backlash, drone technology companies must be prepared to handle these situations," he said. "I think we need to wait for delivery drone trials near city centers—that will be the real test, at least initially generating some polarization and then sparking public debate."

These test cases are accelerating in various regions, from rural Africa to the U.S. West Coast: In West Africa, drone logistics company Volansi has been using drones to deliver spare parts and critical components to mining and oil and gas customers. Co-founder Hannan Parvizian said this provides a faster delivery solution than alternatives. "We created different pickup points that merge into a route crossing the airport, then split apart again," Parvizian said, describing it as "aerial lanes merging into aerial routes." Another Volansi project in North Carolina involves transporting temperature-sensitive pharmaceuticals from a manufacturing facility to medical centers. The airspace there is "fairly densely populated," and the company has established dedicated aerial routes in the area.

"This is no longer a distant reality," Parvizian said. "It's happening, and I think in a few years, as infrastructure and air traffic management become more mature, you'll see it explode."

Finding pioneer communities

A notable step in building drone highways involves the city of Ontario, California, partnering with Detroit-based startup Airspace Link, a provider of drone flight authorization and management solutions for state and local governments. The initiative will explore applications for package delivery and emergency first responder operations, working with the FAA to open more airspace to support drone flights using Airspace Link technology.

Lisa Peterson, Vice President of Business Development and Marketing at Airspace Link, said: "Ontario is one of the leading cargo airports in the U.S., a hub for UPS and a feeder for FedEx, which makes logistics one of the most important use cases they're seeking to launch. We're working to partner with cities to build shared digital infrastructure and invite entities to launch services in these ready communities." Peterson said the company is also involved in a large $28 million project in North Dakota to build infrastructure for 50 miles of beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) operations, which could eventually expand statewide. "Once we understand the key components of that solution, we can standardize those datasets and scale them across the state or the entire country," Peterson explained.

She noted that use cases also include emergency service providers who can use drones to quickly assess a scene, as well as inventory management and aerial surveillance. Peterson also highlighted another potential project related to the expansion of Michigan's connected and automated vehicle (CAV) testing corridor, which would include a drone corridor. "Michigan has embraced autonomous vehicles in ground transportation, and they are also motivated to adopt the technology in the air," she said. "It becomes a partnership—we bring the private sector and public sector together, and we are the bridge between the two." She noted that the company is adding about two new agency clients per week and receives "strong interest" from local and state governments seeking new solutions for safely integrating drones.

For Volansi's Parvizian, the case for building advanced drone infrastructure goes beyond commercially viable use cases to breaking the limits of ground infrastructure and improving the environment. "We've destroyed the world around us to keep cars running and spent trillions of dollars maintaining these roads, which is simply absurd," he said. "If you spent a trillion dollars on vertical transportation solutions, we would be much further along in this process." He predicts that eventually such ground infrastructure will become largely obsolete—or at least be moved underground—and surface highways could be replaced by livable green spaces. "We want to change the world, and we envision a world where building physical ground infrastructure is no longer necessary; you'll be able to achieve point-to-point mobility and logistics, and our lives will be transformed as a result," he said. "I'm quite confident that in one or two decades we'll achieve this—and these are the initial steps that will change the entire world."