There’s No Flying in Drone School

By JACK NICAS and ANDREA GALLO

Welcome to drone school. Please don’t fly any drones.

Capitalizing on an anticipated boom in the unmanned-aircraft industry, several U.S. universities and colleges are launching training programs for future drone pilots. The problem: the Federal Aviation Administration says its rules barring commercial use of drones apply to teaching programs as well, effectively prohibiting students from hands-on instruction. So the schools are teaching tomorrow’s drone pilots with simulators, textbooks and more novel workarounds.

“I take them all the way up to the point where the motor’s ready, and then I tell them to abort,” said Don Wirthlin, head of the drone-training program at Cochise College in Douglas, Ariz. “We’re not going to do anything illegal.”

One of Mr. Wirthlin’s latest strategies in avoiding the no-fly rule is to string a drone from a boom truck to teach students how to use its camera and sensors. He also puts students through tricky drone-simulator scenarios, such as locating missing people in an offshore oil-rig fire, pursuing a car that flees an accident and spotting cattle that have escaped from a ranch.

Some drone-instruction programs are small and grant technical certificates or associate degrees, like the one at Cochise, a community college, which has 15 students and charges an in-state tuition of about $24,500, not including housing.

Others are intensive four-year programs where students train on expensive flight simulators and even manned aircraft. Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, in Daytona Beach, Fla., augments simulator training by having students fly drones indoors, or tethered to the ground with heavy-duty fishing line. The four-year program totals about $175,000, including flight time and room and board.

http://online.wsj.com/articles/theres-no-flying-in-drone-school-1406311856