Visual Line Of Sight For Increased Property Values & Passive Income
Helping Operators Fly
Thank you to everyone for reading. For intel or to discuss how you can support our work in opening up low-altitude airspace you can find me at SkyTrade and email me at jonathan@sky.trade
Those who control low-altitude airspace and who regulate flying vehicles in that airspace are not the same.
Court rejects drone operators' claims of federal field preemption of Texas drone no-fly zones. “Federal law expressly contemplates concurrent non-federal regulation of drones” - NPPA v. McCraw
Beyond Visual Line Of Sight
Operating drones Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) entails flying them beyond the direct line of sight of the pilot. With BVLOS you can have 1 pilot for every ~30 drones, whose throughput can be ~10 deliveries per hour.
For the drone industry to scale BVLOS is one of the ingredients that’s needed. Without it, the economics of many commercial operations don’t add up. The Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) in the US are making sure they are moving in the right direction and allowing more and more operators to be granted the right to fly BVLOS. Ensuring safety is of paramount importance and requires specific measures.
Detect and Avoid (DAA) Capability: Implementing technology that enables the drone to detect and evade other airborne objects, similar to how a pilot in a manned aircraft operates.
Operational Mitigation: This term encompasses strategies and actions aimed at minimizing the risk of drone collisions with other aircraft. Airspace segregation, for instance, can designate drone-exclusive areas in the sky where other aircraft are absent, serving as an effective approach. This gives a level of safety but stops competition and reduces the scalability, so for testing purposes is useful but not for commercial operations.
U.K
The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), the UK's aviation regulatory body, currently prioritizes airspace segregation over-relying on historical traffic data for safety, especially in BVLOS operations lacking a technical DAA capability.
Europe
Europe divides drone flights into three categories: open, specific and certified. BVLOS operations are only possible in the specific or certified category. There is an option to obtain a light UAS operator certificate (LUC), which allows the drone operator to start a new BVLOS operation without requiring prior authorization for each operation. The LUC is an organisational approval certificate. Drone operators ask their National Aviation Authority of registration to have their organisation assessed to demonstrate that they are capable of assessing the risk of an operation themselves.
United States
The FAA’s long-term goal is to safely integrate drones into the airspace rather than
set aside separate airspace exclusively for drones. This approach is consistent with the FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012 and the FAA Extension, Safety, and Security Act of 2016. The 2016 Act directed the FAA, in conjunction with NASA, to continue developing the plan for Unmanned Aircraft Traffic Management (UTM), which will help integration.
FAA Speeds Up
Swiss drone manufacturer, SwissDrones, recently received approval from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for its SDO 50 V2 uncrewed helicopter system. The FAA granted SwissDrones' aerial service provider, Phoenix Air Unmanned (PAU), beyond line of sight (BVLOS) authorization, allowing for nationwide drone flights. This marks a significant development, as it’s the first BVLOS approval of its kind from the FAA, setting a vital precedent for the drone industry. Previously the approvals were exclusively for limited areas.
SwissDrones, based in Zurich, Switzerland, develops long-range uncrewed helicopter systems. Its innovative twin-rotor aircraft offers a cost-effective alternative to crewed helicopters. The SDO 50 V2 has a maximum weight of 191 pounds, a payload capacity of 30 to 70 pounds, and over three hours of flight time.
PAU, an American drone service provider based in Georgia, plans to utilize SwissDrones aircraft for diverse data-gathering tasks, including high-resolution imaging, LiDAR data collection, and thermal imaging, aligning with its mission to provide accurate LiDAR data and high-resolution imagery for surveying, utility inspections, and engineering design. With this FAA green light, PAU can now cover distances of up to 60 miles or more, optimizing its efficiency and cost-effectiveness in infrastructure inspection.
SwissDrones already holds a European drone operator LUC license from the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA). The FAA approval was the culmination of a three-year effort by SwissDrones and PAU to demonstrate the safety and regulatory compliance of BVLOS operations through extensive flight trials. This opens the door for other organizations to pursue BVLOS approvals for their commercial operations.
What is so interesting about the increasing amount of allowable drone operations that are beyond the visual line of sight is where these drones will be allowed to fly. While the authorising authorities can grant permission for them to fly, it is not a blank cheque to fly anywhere.
Legal Systems
Property rights are dealt with differently in various jurisdictions. In the US common law means the low-altitude airspace up to ~500 ft is owned by the underlying landowner. Other common law jurisdictions are the same, including Canada, the UK, (no longer in the EU) and Ireland. The European overarching LUC licence does not, and cannot, compel member states to upend their strongly held property rights to the disbenefit of the asset owners.
This means that drone operators have one part of the required permissions when they obtain the BVLOS approvals but not the permission to be in the airspace of private property owners. A problem to be solved.
Thank you to everyone for reading and you can contact me at jonathan@sky.trade
