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Unmanned Aircraft Systems: FAA Should Improve Drone-Related Cost Information and Consider Options to Recover Costs

GAO-20-136 Published: Dec 17, 2019. Publicly Released: Dec 17, 2019.
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Fast Facts

Drones can deliver packages, help fight fires, and provide other benefits in the United States. Demands on the Federal Aviation Administration’s staff and resources are increasing as FAA works to safely integrate drones into the nation’s airspace.

The administration and Congress could choose to set user fees to help FAA recover costs. Planning and considering policy goals could help FAA inform that decision in the future.

We recommended improving drone-related cost information and using available guidance to better position FAA to potentially recover those costs with fees in the future.

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Highlights

What GAO Found

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has undertaken actions to integrate unmanned aircraft systems (UAS or “drones”) into the national airspace and has developed plans to allow for increasingly complex operations, including operations over people and beyond visual-line-of-sight and—eventually—passenger operations (see figure). However, FAA efforts to track related costs may result in incomplete information. FAA established a means of tracking the costs associated with some UAS-activities in certain offices, but many, if not all, FAA offices are doing work related to both manned aviation and UAS. FAA officials stated that they do not know or plan to assess the extent to which staff who split their time between UAS-activities and other responsibilities are tracking those costs. Furthermore, FAA's future costs to conduct oversight and provide air navigation services are largely unknown due to the changing nature of the industry and its early stage of development. Ensuring that information on UAS-related costs is complete and reliable now could put FAA in a better position to identify those costs as they evolve and possibly expand in the future.

Potential Future Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Capabilities

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The extent to which FAA should recover costs for its UAS-related activities, and what fees are appropriate, are policy decisions for the administration and Congress. Accordingly, this report does not recommend any specific fee mechanism. Nonetheless, planning and consideration of policy goals, using available guidance on user fee design, could better position FAA to inform future decision-making on these issues as it proceeds with UAS integration. Since 2015, FAA has collected a registration fee from UAS operators, but most of FAA's UAS costs are not related to registration or covered by this fee. A stakeholder group established by FAA identified potential fee mechanisms and concluded in 2018 that the aviation industry, FAA, and Congress should identify revenue streams to help fund FAA's UAS activities. Further, GAO guidance and Office of Management and Budget instructions provide a framework, including information requirements, for designing effective user fees. FAA officials said that they have not considered user fee mechanisms as part of their planning because they have been awaiting this report to inform their decision-making. By using available guidance as part of its planning, FAA could incorporate steps, such as identifying costs and beneficiaries, which would benefit future fee design considerations.

Why GAO Did This Study

UAS have the potential to provide significant social and economic benefits in the United States. FAA is tasked with safely integrating UAS into the national airspace. As the UAS sector grows, so do demands on FAA's staffing and other resources to develop, oversee, and enforce rules and systems needed to safely integrate UAS into the national airspace.

The FAA Reauthorization Act of 2018 provides for GAO to review issues related to establishing fee mechanisms for FAA to recover its costs related to UAS. This report discusses, among other things, 1) FAA efforts to track the costs of current and planned activities related to UAS and 2) key considerations and options for designing user fee mechanisms that could recover FAA's costs. GAO reviewed FAA documents and financial data for fiscal years 2017 through 2019 and industry reports on drone integration funding. GAO interviewed a non-generalizable sample of 22 UAS industry stakeholders, selected based on participation in FAA advisory groups or prior GAO knowledge to achieve a range of perspectives. GAO reviewed its guidance on designing effective fee mechanisms and OMB instructions to agencies about implementing user fees.

Recommendations

GAO is recommending that FAA (1) implement a process to ensure UAS-related cost information is complete and (2) use available guidance on effective fee design to incorporate steps, as part of UAS integration planning, that will inform future fee design considerations. FAA concurred with the recommendations.

Recommendations for Executive Action

Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Office of the Administrator The Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration should develop and implement a process to ensure that information on UAS-related costs is complete and reliable as capabilities and related regulations evolve. (Recommendation 1)
Closed – Implemented
FAA is tasked with safely integrating unmanned-aircraft systems (UAS) into the national airspace. As the UAS sector grows, so do demands on FAA's staffing and other resources to develop, oversee, and enforce rules and systems needed to safely integrate UAS into the national airspace. These additional demands have related costs. However, as we reported in 2019, FAA efforts to track related costs may result in incomplete information. FAA had established a means of tracking the costs associated with some UAS-activities in certain offices, but many, if not all, FAA offices were doing work related to both manned aviation and UAS. FAA officials stated that they did not know or plan to assess the extent to which staff who split their time between UAS-activities and other responsibilities were tracking those costs. Furthermore, FAA's future costs to conduct oversight and provide air navigation services are largely unknown due to the changing nature of the industry and its early stage of development. This lack of visibility into UAS-related costs is inconsistent with OMB instructions to agencies on financial reporting requirements and standards for federal financial accounting that agencies should report the full cost of each program, including both direct and indirect costs and the costs of identifiable supporting services provided by other offices within the agency. Further, federal standards for internal control note that agencies should use complete and accurate data to make informed decisions. With no assurance that information on UAS-related costs was complete, FAA risked making decisions based on information that did not reliably reflect the full costs of its UAS activities. Implementing a process to ensure that information on UAS-related costs is complete and reliable now could put FAA in a better position to identify those costs as they evolve and possibly expand in the future. As such, we recommended that FAA develop and implement a process to ensure that information on UAS-related costs is complete and reliable as capabilities and related regulations evolve. In 2024, we confirmed that FAA had implemented a process to better track UAS-related costs. First, in 2021, FAA issued Order 2700.37A, which established an agency-wide policy to collect information on hours worked by employees on specific projects and tasks, including UAS-related work. As stated in the Order, this will allow FAA managers and employees to understand staff resources required for achieving agency goals and objectives. Implementing this agency-wide policy enables FAA to better understand the costs of its UAS-related activities. Second, FAA has developed a survey of UAS operators to collect information about UAS users' flight activity. The survey results, published in FAA's 2023-2043 Aerospace Forecast, provide FAA with a better understanding of UAS operations in the national airspace. As such, this survey will provide FAA with a better understanding of the need for UAS-related FAA resources, such as air traffic control resources, and related costs. Together, these FAA efforts to establish processes to collect more reliable information on (1) costs of UAS-related FAA activities and (2) UAS operations in the national airspace that may place demands on FAA resources and incur additional cost in the future, will provide FAA with a better understanding of its resource needs related to UAS as the industry continues to expand. With more reliable information on FAA's UAS-related costs, the administration and FAA can now make better-informed policy decisions regarding resources needed as UAS become further integrated into the national airspace and as UAS oversight becomes an increasing part of FAA's mission.
Office of the Administrator The Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, as part of UAS integration-planning efforts, should use available guidance on effective fee design to incorporate steps that will inform future fee-design considerations. For example, FAA may choose to incorporate these additional steps into its annual UAS implementation plan so that—as existing activities are adapted for UAS users or new regulations, services, or systems are introduced—costs and fee design options are considered. (Recommendation 2)
Open
As of December 2023, FAA officials stated they planned to initiate a new cost allocation study including drones as a new user group. Additionally, FAA stated that it plans to review charging mechanisms to determine which mechanism might be the most appropriate and efficient to equitably recover UAS related costs. We will continue to monitor FAA's efforts to implement this recommendation.

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Topics

Unmanned aerial systemsAviationUser feesCompliance oversightAirspaceTraffic managementAircraftAccounting standardsNational airspaceFederal rulemaking