It’s official. model airplanes are aircraft, according to the National Transportation Safety Board, which on November 18 reversed the March 6 ruling of NTSB judge Patrick Geraghty. In that ruling, which came about because the FAA assessed a $10,000 civil penalty on the commercial use of a model aircraft by Raphael Pirker, Geraghty said the FAA had no basis for asserting FAR Part 91 authority over Pirker’s operation and that only advisory guidance applies to model aircraft. The FAA said that Pirker flew his aircraft, a Ritewing Zephyr weighing less than five pounds, “in a careless or reckless manner” in violation of FAR 91.13(a).
The FAA “has not issued an enforceable FAR regulatory rule governing model aircraft operation; (and) has historically exempted model aircraft from the statutory FAR definitions of ‘aircraft’ by relegating model aircraft operations to voluntary compliance with the guidance expressed in AC 91-57,” the ruling stated.
In a bit of levity in that ruling, Geraghty pointed out “To accept [the FAA’s] interpretive argument would lead to a conclusion that those definitions include as an aircraft all types of devices/contrivances intended for, or used for, flight in the air. The extension of that conclusion would then result in the risible argument that a flight in the air of, e.g., a paper aircraft, or a toy balsa wood glider, could subject the ‘operator’ to the regulatory provisions of FAA Part 91, Section 91.13(a).”
The NTSB’s November 18 reversal of Geraghty’s Article source: http://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/blogs/ain-blog-model-aircraft-are-officially-subject-faa-oversight