Drone News: 2023 Year in Review, New Drones, Drones for Good, Don't be That Guy, and Regulations

Welcome to your weekly news update, New Year's edition! Let's
take a look at everything that's happened this year including
drones for good, the don't be that guy compilation, drone
regulation, Pilot Institute updates and of course new drones,
starting with the Autel EVO Max....





We also reported on some Drones For Good stories this year,
starting with a teen who saved people in their car. And of
course, the FAA was front and center on many of our updates this
year, but also some states, like Tennessee banning non-NDAA
drones. Let's not forget about everyone's favorite segment: Don't
be that guy! Starting with the guy who flew over the Bengals game
in 2022. There were also a few surprises with Airmap shutting
down their LAANC service, Amazon having a lot of issues keeping
employees on board, and Skydio quitting the consumer drone
business. But on the bright side, we accomplished a lot at Pilot
Institute. We partnered with Influential Drones, Unmanned
Tactical Group, and Axon Air to help provide even more training
to our customers. We received a BVLOS waiver and submitted many
more. We joined hand with the Drone Advocacy Alliance to help
push back on non-sensical anti-drone regulation. We partnered
with Aloft to provide the Air Aware to recreational pilots in
preparation of the expected retirement of the current B4UFLY app.
Then we travelled the country to various tradeshows: the Texas
Robotic Summit in Burnitt TX, Sun N Fun in Lakeland Florida,
AUVSI in Denver, FliteFest in Ohio, EAA Air Venture in Oshkosh
WI, Commercial UAV Expo in Las Vegas, two back to back events in
Colorado with the Colorado Round Up and the Colorado AirShow, and
AZ Drone Fest in Phoenix AZ. We published 14 new courses,
including 8 new drones courses such as the Skydio 2 and X2, DJI
Mavic 3 Enterprise, Air 3, Mini 4, Inspire 3, the Evo Max 4T, and
the Part 107 Waiver course. We end the year having trained 88,000
remote Pilots to date, 295,000 students totaling 506,000 course
enrollments, 7.3 million lectures completed throughout our
courses (that's 1 lecture every 4 seconds), 30,000 free
registration stickers, 37,000 members in our Facebook groups,
128,000 subs on the various social media channels, and 6,800
WINGS credits issued on the FAASafety website. Needless to say,
none of this would have been possible without all of you. A big
THANK YOU for your continuous support, my team and I certainly
appreciate it. We aren't slowing down, we are already working on
some very cool projects for 2024 and we hope to release the first
one later this month! Happy New Year, fly safe, and see you next
year!