New procedures to support safe drone operations in the EASA Member States
The European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) has extended and updated the drone guidance to harmonize and implement the EU drone regulation.
Stakeholders provided EASA with useful information responding to the NPA 2021-09 (open consultation). EASA analyzed and reviewed this information and developed the ED Decision 2022/002/R.
The objective of this Decision is to maintain a high level of safety for the operation of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) in the open and specific categories and to increase the harmonization of UAS operations in the EU European Union.
ED Decision 2022/002/R is divided into two subtasks:
The first one, called subtask 1a, has been developed according to the feedback provided by EASA’s Member States and Stakeholders and provides:
- Acceptable Means of Compliance (AMC) and Guidance Material (GM) for establishing geographical zones identifying EUROCAE ED 269 as the standard.
- New AMC and GM for the standard scenarios.
- New AMC with training for pilots operating in the ‘’specific’’ category.
- AMC for crossborder operations defining the procedure of UAS operators and competent authorities.
- New predefined risk assessment for Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) operations for linear inspections.
- Revision of the AMC following the feedback received.
The second one, subtask 1b, provided the new predefined risk assessment PDRA G-03 developed by the Joint Authorities for Rulemaking on Unmanned Systems (JARUS) and consulted through its web to facilitate authorizations for UAS operations for surveillance and inspection of facilities and infrastructures, with the UA flying very close to them. The mentioned PDRA can also be used for operations below 30m and atypical airspace.
Some of the inquiries received by EASA are related to the definition of concepts such as ‘’populated area’’, training for pilots in the specific category, transport of certain types of goods, amendments, and changes in the regulation, etc.
The answers to the comments will be published in the Comments Response Document (CRD) to NPA 2021-19, which will be published in the second quarter of this 2022 together with Decision 2 issuing the amendments to AMC1 Article 11 (SORA) to Regulation (EU) 2019/947.
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