The FAA has opened a streamlined waiver pathway for multi-drone BVLOS (Beyond Visual Line of Sight) operations, and Skydio announced on March 26, 2026, that 12 public safety agencies have already received approval to let a single remote Pilot in Command (PIC) simultaneously operate up to four Skydio X10 drones. According to the announcement on Skydio’s blog, the agencies receiving approval include the New York City Police Department, the San Francisco Police Department, the Oklahoma City Police Department, and the Omaha Police Department, among others. This builds on approvals Skydio secured for the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department (LVMPD) in September 2025 and New York Power Authority in January 2026. The specific conditions of each waiver were not published alongside the announcement.
The staffing math is blunt. Historically, BVLOS waivers have operated on a one-pilot-per-drone basis. At fleet scale, that constraint kills the economics of any multi-dock program. Multi-drone approval breaks that ceiling without adding headcount.
One Pilot, Four Drones: How the FAA Got Comfortable With This
The central regulatory question was workload. The FAA needed an answer to how a single pilot can safely supervise multiple aircraft without degrading safety. Skydio’s answer is its AI-powered Skydio Autonomy stack, which the company describes as shifting the operator’s job from hands-on flight control to orchestration.
The multi-drone approvals sit on top of the existing shielded BVLOS framework: operations at or below 200 feet AGL (above ground level) or within 50 feet of a structure, where crewed aircraft rarely operate, combined with ADS-B In integration for traffic awareness. Over 1,100 public safety organizations have already secured Part 91 waivers under that framework. Multi-drone adds a new software layer on top, not a new airspace regime…