This year’s GUTMA event took place 4-5 November and Global Airspace Radar had the opportunity to attend. Being the first time I’ve attended this event I wasn’t sure what to expect in the conference. There was good participation across the unmanned traffic management (UTM) ecosystem, with participants from Europe, Australia, Japan, the US, and more. Discussions addressed opportunities for innovation and current challenges. The challenges focused mainly on the lack of forward momentum in regulation in Europe. Although this is a well discussed challenge, it’s time to determine how we move forward and do so.
The conference was kicked off by Koen De Vos, Secretary-General, GUTMA with a suggestion that UTM should now be considered critical infrastructure. There’s been a great deal of discussion in different countries within the EU regarding the consideration of air traffic management (ATM) as critical infrastructure, which I believe makes a lot of sense. If you can align your thinking with ATM as critical infrastructure, then UTM should also be in this category.
The role of the CAA
Civil aviation authority (CAA) representatives from Australia, Belgium, and Switzerland joined panels throughout the two days and shared some of the current lessons learned in each of their regions. The seamless drone market panel aligned that momentum is needed around automated testing, prioritisation of funds and areas of work, and working together across the ecosystem.
Australia – the CAA doesn’t decide which services are offered, the air navigation service provider (ANSP) does. They’ve set up an authorisation solution that’s similar to LAANC in the US supporting 9-10 applications based on the GUTMA templates. In the future automated testing will help to support new operators gaining approval to fly.
Belgium – shared an example of the impact for BVLOS flights in the Port of Antwerp/Bruges where samples of hazardous materials are transported for testing with a savings of 50 minutes per sample. This has a direct economic impact of the ships being able to spend less time in port before moving to their next destination. They have already seen job creation as a result of drone operations, and local high schools and a university have created a programme to learn how to be a project manager for drone operations. This is all good news towards upscaling drones to be a real service providers, but the downside and limiting factor is that the administration is still too complex and time consuming.
Switzerland – FOCA was the host for the event in Zurich and participated across many of the panels during the two days. One of the key presentations was the sharing of the lessons learned and constraints to try and implement U-space in Zurich.
There’s been a long path traveled already in this region. Beginning in 2017 with a demonstration in Geneva, they are now eight years into this process and still can’t claim a U-space in Zurich. Two years into the risk assessment process, the goal for field testing is Q2, 2026 with full deployment by the end of next year. There are two U-space service providers (USSPs) certified – ANRA Technologies and Innov’ATM – and two additional USSPs in the certification process – Avision and Avielo. The timeline in the visual below illustrates the reality of how long it is taking for a U-space implementation to occur in Europe.
The role of the ANSP
In addition to having many CAA representatives in Zurich, ANSPs also joined. It takes both these entities to consider airspace management as a whole. Skyguide shared their view of the role of the air traffic controller going forward. “The role of the controller needs to change. We still need the human in the loop, but we need to become automated enough to be able to management multiple USSPs.” The separation of technology from operations cannot be the answer, this needs to be considered holistically.
Airservices Australia brought the perspective from the opposite side of the globe. There were two key areas shared that ANSPs could address to support drones scaling as desired by the entire industry. First, to build an understanding of what is conspicuity across all airspace users including airlines and general aviation. Second, building and sharing the value proposition for the use of UTM. What’s in it for the drone operator? If they are from a government organisation, recreational users or traditional aviation – why does this matter to them. Traditional aviation tends to look at return on investment of cycles from ten to fifteen to twenty years; this doesn’t work for drone operations. The discussion needs to change.
Looking for innovation
The drone side of the industry is recognised as where the startups are and as result a lot of the innovation. During the two days in Zurich, we had the opportunity to learn about some examples.
Zipline shared some of their lessons learned and success in Dallas, Texas. With thousands of delivery flights occurring on some days, there are a lot of great learnings coming out of this deployment.
Three areas of focus are needed to really scale. Interoperability where everyone speaks the same language. Think about sending an SMS message from one telecom network to another or making a bank transfer across banks or geographies. The user doesn’t think about how this works behind the scenes, and they shouldn’t have to. The same functionality should be in place between UTM systems where a drone can cross from one area to another without interruption. Second conspicuity must work financially. If sensors need to be deployed that could cost $1,000 per square mile, the economics don’t work. If we want broader adoption of UTM, the economics for conspicuity need to come down. Last is an agreed to process for priority, right-of-way, and conflict handling between two uncrewed flight and a crewed/uncrewed flight.
Defence organisations are far ahead of civilian organisations in the use of drones. The wider industry should not overlook the innovation that is being done here and how it can be leveraged. Digital infrastructure – telecoms networks – need to be leveraged to identify who is flying. Is it a friend or foe? In the Baltics, this is already happening as the initial contact by an enemy will be remote – ie a drone. Dimetor stated that the single most important reason we need U-space implemented in Europe is for defence. “We only have one airspace, and we can’t ignore it’s use by enemies, criminals and unaware drone pilots who are breaking laws due to being clueless.”
Do we need pilots?
Just to get a little controversial in my summary, do we actually need pilots in aviation? EUROCONTROL stated that unmanned aerial systems (UAS) are still aviation. I hope we can all agree on this! And as a result, they have the same responsibilities as crewed aviation. As we move from one-to-many remote drone piloting, Wing stated a goal of reaching a scenario where 1 pilot can manage 5,000 square kilometres of drone flights. This isn’t so different than an air traffic controller managing an assigned section of airspace. In order to do this, the industry needs better weather and drone information for drones. Even today in crewed aviation, the pilot is mainly supporting take-off and landing, and the bulk of the flight is autonomous. Do we get to a day without pilots in all aviation? EUROCONTROL even stated that remote piloting is interesting for all aviation.
Today the human is the biggest cost in drone operations. The separator in crewed aviation is air traffic control, in lower-level aircraft it is the pilot on board, and in drone operations it is the remote pilot. The later needs to be a UTM system in the future. Thales stated that human intervention in the future should be the exception and not the rule.
It was an enlightening two days and I was happy to have the opportunity to join. There were so many takeaways they don’t all fit in one article. I’m hoping to follow up with some deeper dives in some of these topics over the next few weeks/months.
