If you visit the beach near Miami this winter, you may witness technology designed to shake up both the aviation and advertising industries: a drone towing a large banner through the sky.
Federal aviation authorities have approved the first drone operation to take on the age-old business of small aircraft that lug long airborne advertisements, according to an announcement by the company behind the concept, Sustainable Skylines Corp.
Instead of having traditional planes hauling banners promoting beachwear, bars and crab shacks past sun bathers, Sustainable Skylines has Federal Aviation Administration approval to use a heavy-duty device without a pilot on board. It not only saves fuel and lowers cost, but is safer, the company said.
“This is the milestone we’ve been working toward for the past three years,” Jacob Stonecipher, Sustainable Skylines’ founder and chief executive officer, said in an interview.
The company also plans to use on-board cameras and mobile phone tracking to get more precise information on how many people can see the banners in an attempt to give advertisers better data, Stonecipher said.
As with other FAA drone approvals, the agency is moving slowly. The company must have spotters on the ground to make sure the drone, which can weigh as much as 121 pounds (55 kilograms) with a banner, steers clear of other aircraft.
And the initial approval is limited to the Miami area and it can’t be flown over people, so at least initially won’t be operating over sporting events or other large gatherings where banner towing is common.
“We want to prove we can do this safely in Miami Beach before we scale this to other markets,” Stonecipher said.
FAA officials in Florida must now approve specific flights, and the company is in the process of hiring full-time operators who guide the devices from the ground, he said. It hopes to begin flights later this year.
The company will be using an aircraft made by Velary, which is based in Washington, D.C., and Ireland. Its Lift 10, which has eight propellers, is powered by a gasoline engine and can stay aloft for longer than battery-driven devices and haul heavier loads.
It uses only 1/10 the fuel that a traditional small plane would consume for a typical flight, Stonecipher said.
It also won’t put pilots at risk, he said. Current banner-towing flights require a complex process of taking off, then swooping low over an airfield to grab the banner with a hook dangling from the rear of the plane. By contrast, the Velary drone can lift off vertically with the banner at the same time.
Accidents on traditional banner flights are relatively common, according to National Transportation Safety Board data. There have been four crashes involving such flights since May 2022, three of them fatal.
The lower risks of flying a drone instead of a piloted aircraft helped Sustainable Skylines make its case to the FAA, said Lisa Ellman, a lawyer at Hogan Lovells US LLP who assisted the company with its application.
“I think it symbolizes the FAA’s growing comfort using drone technology to replace other transportation modes when there are clear safety reasons to do so,” Ellman said.