"Airspace is owned, by the land owner.
"The FAA can not take airspace without compensation."
There's an interesting discussion of these points here:
https://aviation.uslegal.com/ownersh...over-property/
A few significant points:
- The air is generally a
public highway and the airspace overhead is part of the
public domain.
- A landowner’s property interest in the land extends to the airspace directly over the property, to the extent that the airspace can be used to benefit the underlying land.
- The dividing line between the portion of the airspace in the public domain and the portion protected as an incident of land ownership against invasions by aircraft, is the line
delineated by the Federal Aviation Administration as the minimum safe altitude of flight.
- Flights over private land are
not a taking, unless they are so low and so frequent as to be a direct and immediate interference with the enjoyment and use of the land.
Is legal action likely as a result of increased commercial drone activity, especially at low altitudes over people? Absolutely. But there is a well-established public right of access and use, and the FAA has the regulatory duty to decide where the boundaries are.