Industry fearful of political backlash
Analysts and executives are concerned that a political reaction may hinder the rapid growth of the drone industry, after Britain’s second-busiest airport, London’s Gatwick, was this week affected by incursions by illegal drones, disrupting travel for more than 120,000 people.
High-profile security incidents like the one that shuttered Gatwick ‘‘tend to give politicians a knee-jerk reaction to regulate and to restrict development’’, said Kumardev Chatterjee, chief executive officer of Unmanned Life, a European drone software startup. Instead, authorities should better manage the sector to enable innovation to continue, he said.
The global commercial drone market is expected to grow on average 36 per cent each year to reach US$14.7 billion (NZ$21.9b) by 2022. Some of the world’s largest technology companies have been keen to seize the opportunity and demonstrate the benefits to policymakers.
Amazon has been testing drone delivery services. Dozens of other companies, such as Qualcomm, FedEx, Uber and Facebook, have shown interest in being involved in the future development of drones – for everything from delivering food to inspecting planes.
NATS, Britain’s air traffic control provider, is partnering with a small avionics company to create technology that will broadcast the position and flight data of drones, much as radar transponders do for larger, manned aircraft. NATS says this will allow commercial drones to operate at low altitudes, out of sight of their pilots. Those conducting out-ofsight drone flights will have to register their flight plans at least an hour before takeoff on a new online portal.
The European Union is working towards new bloc-wide rules, to be adopted as soon as next year, which would require all civilian drones to be registered. This would help authorities more quickly identify any perpetrators in a similar event such as Gatwick. In addition, the new rules will allow member states to set out their own geographical zones where drone flights can be restricted.