Drone News: 2023 Year in Review, New Drones, Drones for Good, Don't be That Guy, and Regulations

Welcome to your weekly news update, New Year's edition! Let's take a look at everything that's happened this year including drones for good, the don't be that guy compilation, drone regulation, Pilot Institute updates and of course new drones, starting with the Autel EVO Max....

We also reported on some Drones For Good stories this year, starting with a teen who saved people in their car. And of course, the FAA was front and center on many of our updates this year, but also some states, like Tennessee banning non-NDAA drones. Let's not forget about everyone's favorite segment: Don't be that guy! Starting with the guy who flew over the Bengals game in 2022. There were also a few surprises with Airmap shutting down their LAANC service, Amazon having a lot of issues keeping employees on board, and Skydio quitting the consumer drone business. But on the bright side, we accomplished a lot at Pilot Institute. We partnered with Influential Drones, Unmanned Tactical Group, and Axon Air to help provide even more training to our customers. We received a BVLOS waiver and submitted many more. We joined hand with the Drone Advocacy Alliance to help push back on non-sensical anti-drone regulation. We partnered with Aloft to provide the Air Aware to recreational pilots in preparation of the expected retirement of the current B4UFLY app. Then we travelled the country to various tradeshows: the Texas Robotic Summit in Burnitt TX, Sun N Fun in Lakeland Florida, AUVSI in Denver, FliteFest in Ohio, EAA Air Venture in Oshkosh WI, Commercial UAV Expo in Las Vegas, two back to back events in Colorado with the Colorado Round Up and the Colorado AirShow, and AZ Drone Fest in Phoenix AZ. We published 14 new courses, including 8 new drones courses such as the Skydio 2 and X2, DJI Mavic 3 Enterprise, Air 3, Mini 4, Inspire 3, the Evo Max 4T, and the Part 107 Waiver course. We end the year having trained 88,000 remote Pilots to date, 295,000 students totaling 506,000 course enrollments, 7.3 million lectures completed throughout our courses (that's 1 lecture every 4 seconds), 30,000 free registration stickers, 37,000 members in our Facebook groups, 128,000 subs on the various social media channels, and 6,800 WINGS credits issued on the FAASafety website. Needless to say, none of this would have been possible without all of you. A big THANK YOU for your continuous support, my team and I certainly appreciate it. We aren't slowing down, we are already working on some very cool projects for 2024 and we hope to release the first one later this month! Happy New Year, fly safe, and see you next year!