On November 14, 2017, the Federal Aviation Administration publicly released a database of every drone registration up to October 31, 2017. This preliminary report is the first detailed analysis of the dataset.
Key Takeaways
- As of October 31, 2017, there are 836,796 hobbyist users and 106,739non-hobbyist drones registered with the Federal Aviation Administration.
- Non-hobbyist drone registrations have accelerated in 2017, while hobbyist user registrations have slowed.
- States with low population densities are more likely to have high rates of non-hobbyist drone registrations.
- The 30 most common non-hobbyist drones account for 88 percent of all registered systems.
- The most popular non-hobbyist drone is the DJI Phantom 4. Drones made by the China-based DJI account for at least 79 percent of all non-hobbyist drones.