For those of you with a desire to delve deeper into drone legislation, and why wouldn’t you?
Do remember that even with the Brexit effect, the UK CAA will remain an integral part of the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA). Our regulations will therefore be very close to the EU’s, as long as they are in the UK’s interests of course.
The acceptance process of the EU’s proposed drone regulation (Implementing Act & Delegated Act) seems to be on schedule. The acceptability of the Implementing Act was voted by the EASA Committee in February 2019 and the Delegated Act was adopted by the European Commission on 12 March 2019.
The most recent editions of the regulation documents are available here:
- Implementing Act – Draft Version
- Implementing Act – Annex – Draft
- Delegated Act – Adopted Version
- Delegated Act – Annex – Adopted Version
Moving forward
The next steps are:
- The Implementing Act is to be translated and will then be published at the end of May 2019 or so.
- The Delegated Act will be scrutinised by the European Parliament and Council over a period of two months. If no objection is raised, it will then be published at the same time as the Implementing Act (end of May 2019).
The EASA is now working on the Decision relative to the Implementing Act that will include:
- The revised AMC and GMs as they were published for information in January 2008 together with the Opinion.
- Additional guidance resulting from the discussion and comments received from the EASA Committee and flowing from meetings with the industry.
- The updated SORA Package, recently published by JARUS. Minor adaptations may be required to be made in order to be consistent with EASA language.
- The first pre-defined risk assessment, as discussed at the EASA workshop in July 2018.
The Decision is due to be published by the end of the third quarter of 2019.
Moreover, the EASA is developing the Opinion for the standard scenario that will include the amendment to the Implementing Act with the Appendix containing the first two standard scenarios (which can be accepted by means of a declaration).