EU Unmanned Aircraft Systems Implementing Regulation delayed

[AndreaBB]

The European Commission has delayed the applicability date of the European Union Unmanned Aircraft Systems Implementing Regulation 2019/947 until 31 December 2020.

The Implementing Regulation will now become applicable in the UK on Thursday 31 December 2020.

The EU UAS Regulatory Package - Outline (CAP 1789) will be updated to reflect the new applicability date of this regulation.

 

[zocalo]

This is getting stupid. I get that governments in general are rather pre-occupied with Covid-19 at present, this has supposedly already been written up and adopted into law and just needs putting into practice. Surely at this point it falls more to the EASA, CAA, etc. to deal with it that the EU/national governments, and they don't seem to have all that much involvement in discussions over whether or not passengers are required to wear masks and other virus related safety procedures. That mostly seems to be a discussion between governments, airlines, airports, and staff unions at present, or is that just the media dumbing it down ?

We currently appear to have:

1. Drone classification in limbo - AFIACT, new aircraft cannot yet have the new class logos on them, so it's not clear how they will be categorised once they become "legacy". How many people are not going to buy a Mavic 3, or whatever else comes down the pipe, unless they know it won't be classed as "legacy" and be arbitrarily limited at some point?
2. The main benefit - standardised rules across the EU - remains highly balkanised - adding yet another headache to trying to operate internationally now that we're finally starting to see EU borders opening up.
3. Training and certification in a mess. Many UK pilot *want* to get certified, but CofCs and GVCs are mostly pending finalisation and may or may not be grandfathered in as the pilot would require, so any such investment remains a gamble. I assume it's a similar situation across most of the EU?
4. Commericalisation of footage in the UK (elsewhere too?) remains on hold unless you have a PfCO or equivalent - see point #3. It's bad enough that people have business plans on hold because of Covid-19, but for those who don't really need more than regular Drone Code restrictions to operate this just compounds the problem. That set of pilots *should* be able to fly commercially NOW, but instead have to either wait another seven months (or more) before they can legally start up their businesses or pay to acquire a certificate they wouldn't otherwise need.

Unable to manage getting people drunk in a brewery (or distillery, if you have more refined tastes) springs to mind...

 

[AndreaBB]

It’s not about UK: EU did announced this 2 months ago, but it was up to each single country to change the local regulation.

 

[gnirtS]

Thats a shame. I quite like the new framework and people need some certaintly about what happens to the PfCO (and huge sums of money to get one if it might not be needed etc).

 

[zocalo]

It’s not about UK: EU did announced this 2 months ago, but it was up to each single country to change the local regulation.

Yes, I realise that. However, I'm mostly coming from a UK perspective since I live here and this is the second "push back" the UK has had on this (from June to November, now to 2021), although AFAICT it's a similar situation right across the EU, especially for countries that have similar changes to their official certifications like the PfCO.

On the UK front, the problem is also compounded by absolutely ZERO publication of these changes by the CAA, despite them having collected the contact details of pilots and email addresses that registered with their scheme last year. I guess we're expected to regularly check the EASA/CAA websites just in case a document gets up-revved and work out what has changed if so - I doubt many of here are doing that, so what hope is there for less dedicated pilots who don't even both with drone forums, etc.? What next? Taking a page from Douglas Adams and "publishing" it the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "beware of the leopard"?

The key question still stands though, regardless of which country we are talking about. This was supposed to be on the statute books of all EU countries *last year* or early this (e.g. before Covid-19), with a view to going live on June 1st. The UK managed that, and we're not even fully in the EU anymore, as well as several other EU countries I'm aware of. It's not like there's going to much change on the enforcement front, a few distances have changed, but the basics are the same: if you breach the regs, or even cause some kind of incident, and get caught it's just a different book that gets thrown at you. So what, exactly, is the reason for the hold up?