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Small drones-- the typical customer ones weighing under 4.41 pounds-- pose hardly any danger to planes, according to a new research study by George Mason University's Mercatus Center. Considering that individuals have actually only started buying up UAVs just recently, the team took 25 years of bird crash information from the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) wildlife strike database. They found that while there are 160,000 documented bird strikes because 1990, just 14,314 incidents caused any damage to planes. Most of the offenders were larger birds flying in development, and only 3 percent of accidents with smaller birds comparable in size to customer drones ever resulted in damage.

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The Mercatus team also considered that the Academy of Design Aeronautics (AMA) discovered in 2014 that the FAA taped even basic drone sightings as a "near miss out on." If you'll remember, the choice to need drone owners to sign up machines weighing more than 250 grams (.55 pounds) was based on worries that the UAVs might put planes at risk. Apparently, though, from the 764 reported incidents, only 27 were actual near misses out on.

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Based upon all these details, the group concluded that it will take 1.87 million years of air travel time for an only 2kg (4.41 pounds) drone to damage an aircraft. Further, it will take 187 million years of air travel time for a UAV to cause injury to a traveler on board. On the other hand, they do acknowledge a lack of data on precisely what type of damage a UAV can cause, because turbines are only checked to see how they'll deal with bird strikes. We doubt this study will make the FAA reassess the obligatory registration, however if it does, then raising the size limitation needed for registration may be a great start.

Flirtey, the start-up that did the first FAA-sanctioned drone shipment in a backwoods, has reproduced the task in a metropolitan setting. It sent out a self-governing hexacopter on a half-a-mile air travel to an empty home in Hawthorne, Nevada on March 10th, carrying food, water and a first-aid kit in a box attached to a rope. It's probably not the most safe and secure method to transfer delicate objects, though, so Amazon might need to design another technique to deliver TVs or anything breakable. The drone flew with absolutely no human intervention-- there was a pilot on standby in case things go awry, but the group programmed its flight path beforehand.

Flirtey CEO Matt Sweeny informed Fortune that it had the ability to encourage the FAA due to its previous experience providing books and car parts in Australia and New Zealand. Hawthorne doesn't exactly have the maze-like skyscraper complexes of big cities, but the air travel did prove that the start-up's machines are capable of browsing more crowded areas with buildings and power lines. It brings Flirtey closer to doing real drone deliveries in the United States. Before that, however, it prepares to kick things up a notch and do another approved air travel in an "metropolitan inhabited location.".