It may seem counterintuitive: wouldn’t flying commercial delivery drones near busy international airports be more dangerous and heavily restricted than flying out in rural farmland?
In reality, experts say the airspace immediately surrounding busy commercial airports is actually the safest and most efficient place to fly delivery drones. Why? It all comes down to an FAA regulatory concept called the Mode C Veil.
What Is a Mode C Veil?
Under Federal Aviation Regulations (14 CFR § 91.215), a Mode C Veil is a defined cylinder of airspace extending 20 nautical miles in all directions from the center of primary Class B airports (like Dallas-Fort Worth, Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson, or San Francisco International).
Within this 20-mile ring, all crewed aircraft — including private helicopters, small single-engine planes and commercial airliners — are legally mandated to operate an active transponder.
Why Mode C veils helps drone operators
To grant Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) approvals under Part 107 or Part 108, the FAA requires drone operators to prove they have an approved “means of compliance” to detect and avoid manned aircraft.
Because every airplane and helicopter in the airspace is broadcasting an electronic transponder signal, delivery drones equipped with ADS-B receivers or ground-based traffic systems can see 100% of nearby manned traffic automatically inside a Mode C Veil. Sure, the airspace is busier than rural airspace, but because all operators in the airspace are fully cooperative, that makes deconfliction surprisingly more simple, more automated and extremely safe.
In airspace outside of these Mode C rings, which are those smaller cities and of course rural areas, private pilots and legacy aircraft are allowed to fly at low altitudes without a transponder broadcasting. That adds complication to drone delivery flights as it creates “dark traffic,” which is aircraft that are invisible to standard electronic receivers.
That’s a big reason why the area around Dallas has been so popular for drone deliveries, as major players like Wing and Zipline, as well as small entrants like Flytrex, all flock to the “Drone Star State.” It’s also a big reason why the DFW area has been the site of so many proof-of-concept efforts around UTM.
“You literally can draw a footprint of where Google, Amazon, Zipline and Manna will be going, and that’s 40% of the market,” said Bobby Healy, CEO of Tulsa-based drone delivery company Manna, which also has operated in Texas.
How cities outside Mode C Veils are solving the problem
So how do you operate safely outside a Mode C Veil? After all, drone flights in cities outside Class B airspace, like Manna’s launch hub in Tulsa, Oklahoma, mean operators can’t rely on mandatory Mode C transponders alone.
One solution is for cities to turn to municipal primary radar networks. In Tulsa, local groups like Tulsa Innovation Labs funded a primary radar array that covers the entire metropolitan area — which is a huge factor in why Manna chose Tulsa for its new headquarters.
“They invested in a primary radar for the city, and they make that radar available to us,” Healy said in an interview with The Drone Girl. “We plug into that radar feed and we can see all that manned traffic, even if they’re not transponding. It means we can fly safely and everybody’s safe because we have what’s called a means of compliance.”
What are your thoughts on Mode C Veils and radar tracking for drone delivery? Let me know in the comments below!
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