Facilitating Opportunities for Advanced Air Mobility

FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION <CFR>47 CFR Parts 1, 2, 22 and 90</CFR> <DEPDOC>[WT Docket No. 24-629; FCC 25-7; FR ID 278575]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Facilitating Opportunities for Advanced Air Mobility</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Federal Communications Commission. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> In this document, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC or Commission) proposes and seeks comment on changes to the rules that govern the operations of three distinct bands of spectrum, modernizing rules to facilitate opportunities for Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) and Uncrewed Aerial Systems (UAS). First, the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) proposes and seeks comment on opening up the 450 MHz band to aeronautical command and control operations; allowing for a single, nationwide license in the band; and adopting flexible licensing, operating, and technical rules that will facilitate robust use of the band at a range of altitudes while minimizing interference to neighboring operations. It also proposes expanding radiolocation operations in the 24.45-24.65 GHz band for uncrewed aircraft system detection operations. Finally, the NPRM proposes to modernize the Commission's legacy power rules for Commercial Aviation Air-Ground Systems in the 849-851 and 894-896 MHz band, which is used for in-flight connectivity. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Interested parties may file comments on or before April 16, 2025; and reply comments on or before May 16, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may submit comments, identified by WT Docket No. 24-629, by any of the following methods: • <E T="03">Federal Communications Commission's Website: http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/.</E> Follow the instructions for submitting comments. • <E T="03">Mail:</E> Filings can be sent by hand or messenger delivery, by commercial overnight courier, or by first-class or overnight U.S. Postal Service mail (although the Commission continues to experience delays in receiving U.S. Postal Service mail). All filings must be addressed to the Commission's Secretary, Office of the Secretary, Federal Communications Commission. • <E T="03">People With Disabilities:</E> Contact the FCC to request reasonable accommodations (accessible format documents, sign language interpreters, CART, etc.) by email: <E T="03">FCC504@fcc.gov</E> or phone: 202-418-0530. For detailed instructions for submitting comments and additional information on the rulemaking process, see the <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> section of this document. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> For additional information on this proceeding, contact Christine Parola of the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau, Mobility Division, at (202) 418-7851, or by email at <E T="03">Christine.Parola@fcc.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> This is a summary of the Commission's Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, in WT Docket No. 24-629; FCC 25-7, adopted on January 13, 2025, and released on January 17, 2025. The full text of this document is available for public inspection online at <E T="03">https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-initiates-proceeding-facilitate-advanced-air-mobility.</E> <E T="03">Providing Accountability Through Transparency Act:</E> The Providing Accountability Through Transparency Act, Public Law 118-9, requires each agency, in providing notice of a rulemaking, to post online a brief plain language summary of the proposed rule. The required summary of this Notice of Proposed Rulemaking is available at <E T="03">https://www.fcc.gov/proposed-rulemakings.</E> Pursuant to §§ 1.415 and 1.419 of the Commission's rules, 47 CFR 1.415, 1.419, interested parties may file comments and reply comments on or before the dates indicated on the first page of this document. Comments may be filed using the Commission's Electronic Comment Filing System (ECFS). • <E T="03">Electronic Filers:</E> Comments may be filed electronically using the internet by accessing the ECFS: <E T="03">https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/.</E> • <E T="03">Paper Filers:</E> Parties who choose to file by paper must file an original and one copy of each filing. ○ Filings can be sent by hand or messenger delivery, by commercial courier, or by the U.S. Postal Service. All filings must be addressed to the Secretary, Federal Communications Commission. ○ Hand-delivered or messenger-delivered paper filings for the Commission's Secretary are accepted between 8:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. by the FCC's mailing contractor at 9050 Junction Drive, Annapolis Junction, MD 20701. All hand deliveries must be held together with rubber bands or fasteners. Any envelopes and boxes must be disposed of before entering the building. ○ Commercial courier deliveries (any deliveries not by the U.S. Postal Service) must be sent to 9050 Junction Drive, Annapolis Junction, MD 20701. ○ Filings sent by U.S. Postal Service First-Class Mail, Priority Mail, and Priority Mail Express must be sent to 45 L Street NE, Washington, DC 20554. <E T="03">People With Disabilities:</E> To request materials in accessible formats for people with disabilities (braille, large print, electronic files, audio format), send an email to <E T="03">fcc504@fcc.gov</E> or call the Consumer & Governmental Affairs Bureau at 202-418-0530 (voice). <E T="03">Ex Parte Status:</E> The proceeding this NPRM initiates shall be treated as a “permit-but-disclose” proceeding in accordance with the Commission's <E T="03">ex parte</E> rules. Persons making <E T="03">ex parte</E> presentations must file a copy of any written presentation or a memorandum summarizing any oral presentation within two business days after the presentation (unless a different deadline applicable to the Sunshine period applies). Persons making oral <E T="03">ex parte</E> presentations are reminded that memoranda summarizing the presentation must (1) list all persons attending or otherwise participating in the meeting at which the <E T="03">ex parte</E> presentation was made, and (2) summarize all data presented and arguments made during the presentation. If the presentation consisted in whole or in part of the presentation of data or arguments already reflected in the presenter's written comments, memoranda or other filings in the proceeding, the presenter may provide citations to such data or arguments in his or her prior comments, memoranda, or other filings (specifying the relevant page and/or paragraph numbers where such data or arguments can be found) in lieu of summarizing them in the memorandum. Documents shown or given to Commission staff during <E T="03">ex parte</E> meetings are deemed to be written <E T="03">ex parte</E> presentations and must be filed consistent with § 1.1206(b). In proceedings governed by § 1.49(f) or for which the Commission has made available a method of electronic filing, written <E T="03">ex parte</E> presentations and memoranda summarizing oral <E T="03">ex parte</E> presentations, and all attachments thereto, must be filed through the electronic comment filing system available for that proceeding, and must be filed in their native format ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> .doc, .xml, .ppt, searchable .pdf). Participants in this proceeding should familiarize themselves with the Commission's <E T="03">ex parte</E> rules. <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Synopsis</HD> 1. AAM is a rapidly evolving new sector of the aviation industry that includes novel kinds of propulsion and flight controls and which is expected to rely increasingly on automated technologies. AAM is expected to support accessible and convenient transportation of people and cargo for a range of purposes including transportation of personnel and medical supplies to hard-to-reach areas in emergencies, regional air mobility to connect remote communities to the national aviation system, and shuttle services between urban areas and to and from airports. AAM systems may be either crewed or uncrewed, with personnel either piloting the aircraft on board or through remotely piloted or automated techniques. UAS support a variety of public and private functions including infrastructure inspection, search and rescue operations, and package delivery, and hold the potential for expanded functionalities, such as long-range, large cargo deliveries. In 2021, there were 2 million UAS in the United States, and, by 2030, that number is anticipated to triple to 6.5 million. Further, the UAS market is projected to grow at a rate of 14.6 percent, and by 2027 is expected to be valued between $29 billion and $54.2 billion. The continued growth and operation of these important aviation technologies will depend on the availability of reliable wireless communications technologies to support flight control and, for AAM transporting passengers, reliable in-aircraft broadband. In addition to wireless communications used by and in these aircraft, the availability of detection technologies is critical to ensure that, as UAS and AAM operations continue to expand, they do so safely. In this NPRM, the Commission proposes and seeks comment on amendments to the rules that govern the operations of three distinct bands of spectrum, which are allocated for a range of different services. But the changes we propose for each band will advance the goal of the safe and effective facilitation of facets of AAM and UAS services. 2. We first propose and seek comment on changes to the service rules that apply to 650 kilohertz of spectrum in the 450 MHz band. In their current form, these site-based rules confine air-ground communications in the band to voice communications with aircraft traveling at high altitudes. We propose to replace the current rigid framework with rules that embrace more f ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 182k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━