FAA to allow Commercial Drones in 2015 - US$100,000 per year for 100,000 Drone Pilot jobs for the next five years

With the FAA (Federal Aviation Authority) set to make Commercial Drones a reality by 2015 as I’d reported in my blog article entitled  “FAA ok’s Drones for Hobbyist – Study to determine Commercial Drone Risk as Amazon, UPS and FedEx Drones get the Kibosh until 2015”, excitement has reached fever pitch.

And nowhere is that excitement more felt than among Airplane pilots, who potentially can make as much as US$50 per hour or US$100,000 per year as Drone pilots as reported in the article “Drone pilot wanted: Starting salary $100,000”, published November 25, 2014: 11:32 AM ET By Ben Rooney, CNN Money.

So says Director of the Center for Unmanned Aircraft Systems at the University of North Dakota, Al Palmer, whose university is now certifying Graduates for this burgeoning field with a Degree in operating and maintaining UAV (Unmanned Aircraft Vehicle) Systems.

Especially if Drones are to work in the cities to deliver packages to people living in apartments or who may be travelling. No surprise here; if US Army still needs pilots to fly Drones, then it stands to reason that pilots will be needed for commercial Drones as well.

FAA releases Commercial Drones - 100,000 Drone Pilot jobs for the next five years

The FAA is set to make regulations that will allow certain light-weight Drones to make commercial flights up to 400 feet. Most likely, these Drones will be flown by certified pilots or Registered Drone Operators working with large companies such as Amazon, Google and even Facebook.

Amazon will be using Drones to power their Amazon PrimeAir 30 minute Drone delivery service as I'd predicted in my blog article entitled “Amazon plans to launch Amazon PrimeAir, their 30 minute Drone Package Delivery Service for Amazon Prime users - Playing Catch-up as Mailpak launches DealBug in Jamaica”.

Expect competition for UPS and FedEx, both of whom have also expressed plans for the use of Drones for Delivery, albeit to reduce the cost of trans-shipments in-between its various Package Distribution Centers, also predicted in my blog article entitled “UPS and FedEx developing their Own Delivery Drones to compete with Amazon PrimeAir - Premium Rush Package Delivery Drones herald the coming of Google's Personal Androids that are Almost Human”.

Translation for the ordinary American: some 100,000 jobs for Drone Pilots for the next five (5) years. This despite the slow and steady of Semi-autonomous Drone Systems such as Project Wing being researched in the Australian Desert by the Google X Labs as stated in my blog article entitled “Google X Labs Project Wing - How to own a Global Satellite based Semi-Autonomous VTOL Drone Delivery Service”.

So despite fears of a Robot takeover, especially in the Fast Food biz by 2017 as predicted in my blog article entitled “Fast Food Robot taking over by 2017 - How Drones like Amazon and PrimeAir and not Humanoid Robots will be the first Robots by 2015”, the fate of Drones seems largely human piloted for the next five (5) years.

After all, if during the annual UAV Challenge: Outback Rescue for the past seven (7) years a semi-autonomous Drone can't find Stranded Joe to bring him a bottle of water in the Australian outback of Kingaroy, north­east Australia as stated in the article “Can Drones get water to stranded”, published 26 November 2014 Last updated at 09:00 GMT, BBC News, then clearly Drones will need pilots.