Europe’s three drone trade associations – Alliance for New Mobility Europe, Drone Alliance Europe and Joint European Drone Associations (JEDA) – and the Global UTM Association (GUTMA) have jointly published a Joint Industry High-level Principles for U-space Level 1 document which seeks to amend the current European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) “U-space light” proposals.
(see EASA/EC “U-space light” proposal hangs in the balance – Unmanned airspace).
According to a LInkedin post from JEDA:
“Despite a comprehensive drone regulatory framework, scalable beyond-visual-line-of-sight drone operations are still not a reality in Europe. We therefore strongly welcome the simplification efforts undertaken by EASA, developed together with industry over the past year, e.g. regarding cross-border operations and the extension of standard scenarios. A last-minute addition to this simplification package tackles one of the major challenges holding back the deployment of drone operations: the complexity of the U-space regulatory framework. The introduction of a staged approach, as proposed by EASA – a U-space Level 1 with a reduced set of services for less complex airspaces – is intriguing and could provide a stepping stone towards full U-space (Level 2) in areas where it is needed.”
According to the associations, the current proposals could not only undermine the objective of safely and predictably scaling BVLOS operations, “but could also have unintended negative consequences for operations that are already taking place and for ongoing efforts to establish U-space airspace.”
Read the full story at our sister publication Unmanned Airspace.
