REGULATORS turn their EYES to the SKY
WITH THREATS ON THE RISE, OTTAWA TASKED WITH FINDING BALANCE
Adramatic event unfolded in the skies over Ottawa on the afternoon of May 25 when two pilots — one from West-Jet Airlines Ltd., one from Air Canada — reported seeing a drone that was flying too close for comfort on their descent into the city’s airport. In response, two CF-18 fighter jets under the direction of NORAD were scrambled to investigate and track down the errant drone.
Two- and- a- half weeks later in Winnipeg, police were called to the city’s airport after a drone flew within 25 metres of a landing plane. In both cases, the drone and its operator were never found.
The number of drone sightings near airports has grown exponentially as recreational unmanned aerial vehicles ( UAVs) have exploded in popularity. Transport Canada investigated six drone incidents in 2013, according to Transport Minister Marc Garneau, but that number rose to 61 in 2014 and 97 in 2015.
The increasing safety threat prompted the minister to launch a safety campaign last week, including “No Drone Zone” signs that will be distributed to airports and other places where it is unsafe or illegal to fly unmanned aircraft.
Transport Canada is also in the midst of developing new regulations for drone use that should be announced by early 2017, Garneau said.
The Canadian UAV industry, which is thriving under the country’s relatively permissive existing rules, is cautiously supportive of having new regulations.
However, industry players warn that a crackdown on recreational users could inadvertently suffocate the tremendous growth potential of commercial drones and are urging the government to invest in testing that could open up UAV use to a whole new array of sectors.
Garneau said Transport Canada has been hearing from pilots concerned about drone sightings near airports for some time, and the situation only seems to be getting worse.
“These drones can pose a very serious hazard and the numbers have been increasing,” he said in an interview.
It may seem like an overreaction to launch fighter jets in response to a drone sighting, but “it illustrates how serious this issue is,” said Dan Adamus, a Jazz Aviation LP pilot and Canadian president of the Air Line Pilots Association International union.
Garneau’s goal is to come up with a set of regulations that will “serve as a model for other countries” without stifling innovation.
Canada was an early leader in commercial drone use, allowing operators to apply for a Special Flight Operating Certificate (SFOC), which is granted at the discretion of Transport Canada. The number of certificates issued to drone operators jumped to 2,480 in 2015 from 66 in 2010. ( Recreational users don’t have to apply unless their drone weighs more than 35 kilograms.)
By comparison, the U. S. Federal Aviation Administration ( FAA) has only all owed commercial drone use since late 2014, and only if a special exemption is obtained. The FAA issued 2,732 exemptions between September 2014 and the end of 2015, according to an analysis by Bard College.
That lag has given Canadian companies a leg up over their U.S. competitors.
“It definitely gave us a head start,” said Dave Kroetsch, chief executive of Aeryon Labs Inc., a Waterloo, Ont.- based manufacturer of drones for civil and military customers. “We’ve been marketing and selling and delivering drones worldwide for years and now the U. S. market’s finally catching up.”
Canada’s r ul e s even prompted Amazon. c om Inc. to do early testing of its planned drone- based delivery service in southern British Columbia instead of the U.S.
More than 1,000 UAV-related businesses have been established in Canada in the past three years, said Mark Aruja, chairman of Unmanned Systems Canada, an industry group.
But both Kroetsch and Aruja warn that more stringent rules could damage the Canadian industry just as it’s establishing itself as a global leader.
“( Our members) are concerned because if we get regulations that are overly restrictive, they’ll restrict the dramatic growth that we’ve had in this sector,” Aruja said.
Adds Kroetsch: “The big risk is if you create more restrictive rules for the people who are already following the rules, you’re just going to inhibit industry.”
Kroetsch said the real problem is that adding new rules won’t make any difference to recreational drone users who don’t already understand the existing rules.
“There’s a big component of education here; making more stringent laws doesn’t necessarily make things better,” he said.
Garneau stressed that he is mostly focused on recreational users, and wants to continue to encourage innovation in the commercial drone industry. “The challenge for us is to make sure that we come up with a set of regulations that are seen as being … very sensible,” he said. “We do have to make sure that we avoid any possible accidents, that we are addressing security requirements, but at the same time that they’re not unduly onerous. It’s achieving that right balance.”
Several new rules for recreational users have been proposed, including the es- tablishment of categories of drones, a registration process for their operators and identification requirements such as serial numbers so that wayward drones can be traced back to their owners.
Currently, recreational drones that weigh 35 kilograms or less must obey a set of rules that includes restrictions on flying near airports, sporting events, festivals, highways, military bases, prisons and forest fires, among other things.
“The problem is that folks are either not aware of ( the rules) or don’t follow them,” said Marc Moffatt, chief executive of the Unmanned Aerial System Centre of Excellence, a research and development site in Alma, Que.
Moffatt proposes a sticker be included on the packaging of recreational drones that tells users to go to Transport Canada’s website for more information on when and where they can be flown.
If the government wants to go even further, Aruja said it could require new drones to include technology that would automatically shut them down if they fly too close to an airport.
“It’s accountability,” said Sterling Cripps, founder and president of Canadian Unmanned Inc., a drone ground school in Medicine Hat, Alta. “We have to have these people made accountable or at least traceable if there’s an accident.”
Several industry players also argue that the government should provide more support to commercial users that want to branch out into new fields.
Currently, safety regulations require that the vast majority of drones must be used in what’s called visual line-of-sight operations — in other words, the operator on the ground must be able to keep an eye on it.
But there’s a tremendous amount of untapped potential beyond that restriction: everything from monitoring crops to inspecting pipelines to counting moose populations in the North.
“We need to be able to scale the industry to handle the reality of Canadian geography, and that’s what beyond visual- line- of- sight does,” Aruja said.
“It’s not much use trying to inspect a 1,000- kilometre pipeline in three- kilometre chunks. That’s going to be a really long day.”
NUMBERS OF (HAZARDOUS SITUATIONS) HAVE BEEN INCREASING.