Hi Ira,

Since I am a Lockheed Martin Engineer, and have been approached by management in discussions of taking on the piloting duties of a UAV if the equipment gets moved to our facility, I think I can respond to some of your comments fairly well.

If I where operating a UAV for LM, I would be fully indemnified by the company. So if there where an accident, I would be fully covered no matter what the out come. This would also clearly be a case of commercial operation, and the AMA has absolutely no involvement in that area. If someone tried to sue the AMA out of an accident in such a case it would almost certainly be thrown out the first time a judge looked at it. Just image the opposite, I have an accident with one of my models at the model field and someone tries to sue LM because I fly UAVs for them and they cover me for that.

Why should the AMA care what you do away from a chartered club site; as stated before, they cover their members no matter where they fly. What if you are flying a model outside the safety code at a local airport and something goes wrong and you take out a 5 million dollar biz jet. What is going to happen? Your personal insurance probably runs out at 2 – 3 million and someone is looking at you for 5. Are you going to tell the folks, who you strongly suspect are getting ready to file suit against you and others, that you where operating outside the national safety code, and therefore they can not involve the AMA? Are you going to testify to the jury that “why yes, I knew that I was operating in a manner that the national safety code says is unsafe, therefore it is only my problem”? Nope, You the AMA and your normal insurance company are all going to become best friends, and everyone is going to try and keep the safety code out of it in order to minimize the damage, accidents get compensation, recklessness gets punitive damages. Let’s say that operating outside the safety code contributed to the accident. Now the AMA is out a couple of million because you did something that they asked you not to do. How fair is that?

The better answer to all of this is to reform the civil legal system so that we all have less concern about legal repercussions surrounding un-intentional accidents.

Steven Ellzey
President, Jet Pilot’s Organization