What's Actually Stopping Air Taxis From Taking Off
The US is about to publish rules that let drones fly beyond line of sight routinely — here's what that unlocks. Part 108, the FAA's upcoming rulemaking for beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) operations, is set to change the economics of commercial drone flight.
Show Notes
Kraettli L. Epperson, Co-Founder and CEO of Vigilant Aerospace, has spent years building the detect-and-avoid systems that make scalable drone operations possible. His focus isn't the drone itself — it's the invisible layer of data, sensors, and safety logic that allows autonomous aircraft to share airspace without introducing unacceptable collision risk. This episode unpacks what Part 108 actually enables, why detect-and-avoid is the gating technology, and what still needs to happen before drones — and eventually air taxis — can operate at scale. The discussion covers why autonomous flight is limited not by hardware but by the ability to safely manage shared airspace, how combining multiple data sources like transponders, radar, and telemetry is essential to build a reliable picture of the sky, the challenge of non-cooperative aircraft that don't broadcast their position, how FAA frameworks like Part 107 and upcoming Part 108 directly shape what operators can and cannot do, and what a fully integrated airspace could look like by 2035.
Click to expand the full episode transcript (8,739 words approx.)
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