On January 9th, 56-year-old Peter Akemann flew his DJI Mini 3 Pro drone far beyond the legal limit of his ability to see — and into a Super Scooper water dumping plane fighting the Los Angeles Palisades wildfires, grounding it for repairs after punching a hole in its left wing. Now that authorities have traced the drone back to him, he agreed Friday to plead guilty — possibly escaping a year in jail in exchange for 150 hours of community service in support of wildfire relief and the roughly $65,000 it cost to repair the plane.
According to the plea agreement (PDF via Courthouse News), his drone flew quite a distance and punched quite a hole:
While the Firefighting Aircraft was conducting its firefighting missions, defendant drove to the area near the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, California, and parked his vehicle on the top floor of a parking structure. Defendant launched the Drone and flew it toward the Pacific Palisades to observe damage caused by the Palisades Fire. At the time, the Federal Aviation Administration had issued Temporary Flight Restrictions that prohibited drone operations near the Southern California wildfires, including the Palisades Fire.
Defendant flew the Drone at least 2500 meters away from its launch point and lost visual sight of the Drone while flying it. Thereafter, the Drone collided with the Firefighting Aircraft, causing an approximately 3-inch-by-6-inch hole in the left wing of Firefighting Aircraft.
The Hollywood Reporter writes that Akemann isn’t just any old drone pilot, but rather the former president and chief technologist of video game developer Skydance Interactive and the co-founder of Treyarch, a studio known for its Call of Duty and Spider-Man games. THR writes that he “recently left his role” at Skydance, which would be news in and of itself. Both the Akemann pleading guilty and the game developer are Peter T. Akemann. A LinkedIn page for Akemann no longer exists, and an X social media page for a Peter T. Akemann has been scrubbed.
It is possible that the US District Court will not accept Akemann’s plea agreement, which his lawyers are making jointly with the US Attorney’s Office, in which case he faces a year of jail time, a year of supervised release, and either up to a $100,000 fine or “twice the gross loss resulting from the offense,” whichever is greater.
Akemann’s attorneys told ABC News he’s now “deeply sorry for the mistake he made by flying a drone near the boundary of the Palisades fire area on January 9, 2025, and for the resulting accident” and “accepts responsibility for his grave error in judgment.”
They also added that there are “mitigating factors that will come to light during the court proceedings, including Mr. Akemann’s reliance on the DJI Drone’s geo fencing safeguard feature and the failure of that feature.”
DJI recently eliminated its most restrictive forms of geofencing, potentially letting drone pilots fly over active wildfires and government buildings like the White House when it might have previously stopped them automatically. That said, DJI recently explained to us that even the earlier versions of its software would not have stopped someone from flying over a temporary no-fly-zone, like a wildfire, unless that person let their drone download the updated temporary flight restriction lists first.
