Europe's Drone Future:

 A Hung Start?

By Aimee Turner -Air traffic management magazine

One of the themes within this latest issue of Air Traffic Management magazine focuses on industry resilience in the face of change: which technologies are emerging and how best to harness them for the collective good of the global air traffic system.

It also highlights the need to venture over the parapet and form new, exotic alliances with technology businesses that may have a far different industrial heritage.

One of the newcomers which will challenge the very nature of the ATM industry is drone technology.

So it comes as some surprise to learn that drone technology will hardly feature in the European blueprint for ATM performance objectives which are being currently drafted for the period 2020-2024.

The public debate will take place in November in Cologne and it will be interesting to see how the European Commission will – following all the hoo-ha of the Riga Declaration to fast track new safety rules allowing low risk drone operations throughout the region – explain away the absence of that particular agenda item.

The debate over drone technology and its insertion into civilian airspace is not going to go away anytime soon. It is obvious that it will dominate European industry affairs during the coming years. It is not just the super-charged Googles and Amazons of this world but some significant operators in the freight sector who are also desperate to explore the advantages of UAV-related activities.

“This kicking-the-can-down-the-road approach looks for all the world positively willful”

It seems to be one of the peculiarities of the Single Sky system, that the Commission can put an issue on the table – and then summarily take it off again.

Especially since the Commission’s approach has to date been quite robust in recognition of the need to address small matters such as what the core operating principles will be.

Why is that? Is it because member states insist that it is all too early to think about drone technology and really engage in the debate? This kicking-the-can-down-the-road approach looks for all the world positively willful.

The reason why the states are refusing to engage are many and varied. On the one hand, the more bullish among them want to wait until their domestic industry secures a competitive advantage before any real substantive discussions take place.

On the other, some really don’t want to broach the issue as it potentially creates a difficult dialogue with their workforce and risks aggravating already fractious industrial relations. It seems that every state will have their own set of circumstances determining their level of support for drone technology.

In a white paper on performance objectives produced by the outgoing Performance Review Board, it notes that the next evolution underway today is the beyond-line-of-sight platform.

“Applications, such as cargo transportation, are perceived to offer development opportunities to compete with maritime trade by reducing unit costs, increasing payloads, and reducing operating crew costs. Whilst it is unlikely we will see un-crewed passenger platforms, unmanned cargo platforms are highly likely, and plans are being discussed by special interest groups who look to deploy these platforms, where possible, maybe as early as [2020-2024].”

And yet the lack of any support at state level for a coherent, joined-up European policy will surely hobble the scale of any potential region-wide innovation. It is only by providing a comprehensive framework for inserting drone technology‑into the overall aviation system, that European entrepreneurs can ever stand a chance of being at the vanguard.

The European Commission tells Air Traffic Management: RPAS is generally an emerging challenge/opportunity in ATM and therefore it is among the risks we monitor and will take into account in the development of our ATM performance policy for RP3. However, it is important to remember that the SES performance scheme is a mechanism for economic regulation of monopoly air navigation service providers. Economic regulation is applied as a proxy for effective competition. We do not economically/performance-wise regulate airspace users through this scheme (neither civil – they are subject to competition in a liberalized market, nor military), nor would we look at regulating drones with this scheme.