THE EMERGING AIRSPACE ECONOMY: A FRAMEWORK FOR AIRSPACE RIGHTS IN THE AGE OF DRONES.

Drone use in the United States has taken off in recent years, bolstered by rapid technological innovations, business needs, and societal changes. It may soon be common to see small, unmanned aircrafts flying above city streets, local fields, and residential and commercial properties across the country. With the capability to deliver packages and transport goods more efficiently and quickly than ever before, drone delivery services have the potential to revolutionize our everyday way of life. Legislators, landowners, and businesses are beginning to explore their future roles in the commercialization of low-altitude airspace. But few, if any, theories of airspace rights and economic regulation have generated a viable legal and regulatory framework that balances the often-competing business imperatives of a robust drone economy, property rights of landowners, and interests of federal, state, and local governments. This Article seeks to remedy that gap. Under existing law, we argue, landowners exclusively own and control the "superadjacent," low-altitude airspace directly above their land, and they are free to commercialize and sell access to, or to prohibit drones from entering, their private airspace. It remains unsettled whether the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has the statutory authority to regulate low- altitude airspace and whether the federal government can do so without committing a "taking" of property that, under the Fifth Amendment, requires compensating landowners. Likewise, the boundaries of privately owned low- altitude airspace and the legal status of the area between it and public, high-altitude 'navigable airspace" remain entirely unclear. Essentially, the questions this Article seeks to answer are: who owns the sky and who should? This Article proposes a legal and regulatory framework to fill in the information gaps surrounding the commercialization of airspace and offers a viable solution for controlling and using low-altitude airspace in the age of drones . We predict the emergence of a marketplace for parties to buy, sell, and lease valuable airspace to accommodate drone delivery, such that companies like Amazon or Walmart will compensate landowners, or even governments that own city streets and highways, for the airspace where drones will one day fly. To effectuate that marketplace, we argue that the FAA must redefine the public 'navigable airspace" for it to lawfully regulate drone flight paths under 500 feet. We also advocate for the division of airspace into four distinct regions, with different rights and responsibilities for those operating in each domain. Our proposal constitutes one of the first comprehensive efforts to establish a framework that balances the rights of federal, state, and local governments, landowners, and drone operators to ensure the safety and full potential of the emerging airspace economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]