JULY 2018 43
and objectives. That way the skies are
safe.”
Safety was a key reason La Franchi
and ACUO were critical of a CASA
decision to deregulate parts of the
industry involving drones under two
kilograms – criticism that formed
part of its submission to the Senate
committee inquiring into RPAs and
associated systems, due to report at
the end of July.
“Good regulation can do an
awful lot to help build the industry.
Questionable regulation, such as
deregulation with no underpinning
safety case, is a very different thing
and out of synch with the prevailing
trend of all aviation regulation
globally.
“There are those who curse us
because we have gone out and fought
hard for sensible regulation, but
history will prove we were on the right
side.”
ACUO is in step with commercial
operators in recognising the big
regulatory gap in Australia around
BLOS and has called for CASA to deal
specifically with the issue separate
to the current Part 101 that covers
existing unmanned systems.
La Franchi said rather than develop
a Part 102, CASA is working on
the basis of exemptions to Part 101
to allow exploratory operations,
commercial operations and science
missions using BLOS, particularly
in remote regional areas – western
Queensland, for example.
“For the commercial unmanned
systems industry to wholly open up to
what is possible, Part 102 is necessary
in Australia with corresponding
regulation internationally. The upside
is that ICAO’s unmanned systems
regulatory project has been fast
tracked for the past three years. Initial
model rules are already out there and
by 2019 we are pretty comfortable that
there will be an accepted international
guide that CASA can base its
proposals on.”
Despite the hurdles, La Franchi
said CASA have done some great
work of late, emerging from a difficult
period of strained relations with the
aviation industry as a whole.
“We have a lot of confidence in
Shane Carmody and the team he has
built around himself. We had our
annual dialogue with CASA just a
couple of weeks ago and it went really
well. CASA is coming back to strength
and there will come a time again
when Australia does lead the world in
regulatory terms. Part 102 and BLOS
operations is the opportunity,” he said.
The other great challenge is
development of an unmanned traffic
management (UTM) system and,
as part of its Senate submission, the
ACUO said a national UTM is the only
long-term viable solution to enable
all aspects of drone operations in
Australia.
“There is an awful lot of work
going on with personal air vehicle
technology. The time for that will
come. The big question obviously is
in certifying what is essentially an
overgrown drone to carry people.
That’s a challenge for the regulators.
Is it technically possible? Completely,”
La Franchi said.
“Meanwhile you could have
multiple, city-based drone courier
services, whether it’s something as
basic as pizza delivery or flying blood
samples between one hospital and
another ... it’s all possible now from a
technical point of view. The question
is how you integrate that with the rest
of the air traffic around you and with
the built urban environment.”
One solution is standardisation
and refinement of data protocols
to provide for integration of drones
within the manned ATC network,from the top of controlled airspace
down to the surface of the earth.
Current ATC stops at 500 feet, 100
feet above the current drone operating
ceiling.
Harris from National Drones
agrees and puts it this way: “We
have a fixed-wing, petrol-powered
system called Penguin B, capable
of flying between 10 and 20 hours.
How can we safely integrate a system
like that into airspace, even class G
(uncontrolled) airspace for large area
survey work?
“Nobody out the back of Bourke
in their Cessna 172 is going to have
ADS-B, so it’s very hard to know
where a light aircraft might be. In
my opinion when ADS-B becomes
mandatary across all aircraft we will
go a long way to solving that issue.
“There are some big companies
working on UTM, but it needs all the
agencies to play along as well. And it
requires a very considered approach.
Yes, we could apply a band-aid but
that will be no good in even 10 years’
time,” he said.
More than a band-aid will be
required to fully realise the immense
commercial potential of drones.China’s Ehang is developing
a passenger-carrying quad-
copter.EHANG.Growth in drone usage
has been spurred by swift
technological development.
NATIONAL DRONES