In this episode we talk to Colin Chesterton from the CAA about our plans to roll out scalable beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) flying to operators flying in the specific category.

Colin sets out our plans for this exciting change throughout 2023.

You can find more information on scalable beyond visual line of sight operations at

https://www.caa.co.uk/bvlos

Voiceover 0:10

The latest drone updates from the UK CAA. This is the CAA Drone Safety podcast.

Jonathan Nicholson (CAA) 0:20

Hello, everybody and welcome to the next edition of our drone podcast from the Civil Aviation Authority. I'm Jonathan Nicholson from the Communications team. And I'm pleased to say we're joined today by Colin Chesterton. Colin, good morning, do you want to talk about yourself?

Colin Chesterton 0:34

Good morning Jonathan, Colin Chesterton, I am the BVLOS Challenge lead within innovation at the CAA. Lots of background within surveillance electronic conspicuity. But now bringing that together to look at how we develop our program of work to deliver BVLOS, drone integration in the UK,

Jonathan Nicholson (CAA) 0:52

Brilliant. And that's what today's podcast is all about BVLOS, and for those who haven't heard that before, that's beyond visual line of sight flying for RPAS drones. So something that particularly a lot of the commercial operators, the larger operators have been after for some time is freedom to fly beyond visual line of sight. Just background obviously, one of the main things with drone rules in the UK is you have to keep your drone in sight when you're flying. Primarily that's so as a drone operator, you can see and avoid other things that fly. But obviously, if you're a commercial drone operator, or somebody who wants to go and do jobs, for example, inspecting infrastructure, surveying, two obvious things where you might want to actually fly your drone a lot further and a lot longer than you can see it for because if you're inspecting something like an overhead power line, you want to go the distance of the line and fly beyond the line of sight. Now, it's not impossible at the moment, there are some people out there flying beyond visual line of sight in the UK with their drones, but it's very limited. And a lot of them are actually tests to help us build up the future. So today, though, very exciting, Colins here to talk to us about how we might change that and how we might give people a bit more freedom. So in a nutshell, Colin, what are we looking at rolling out for people in the future?

Colin Chesterton 2:10

When we look at the challenge of BVLOS, what we're trying to do is work out where we would like to be externally so where we'd like industry to be to be able to deliver that. And we're also looking internally what needs to happen. So between us in the CAA we've worked out a plan that we believe both for us internally sets up the right building blocks but externally will give us routine scalable BVLOS operations over the coming years. In this instance, when we're talking about BVLOS, we're talking about primarily specific category of operators. And where we see the main challenge for this is around airspace integration. We cannot continue to operate on a model where airspace is continually divided up for different operators. And that's prohibitive to existing operators but it's extremely prohibitive to new people trying to enter the market to where we're aiming for is an integrated picture. And to do that what we need to do is work on reducing the midair collision risk. And a lot of our work today is the building blocks to be able to do that.

Jonathan Nicholson (CAA) 3:06

And I think it's fair to say that we'll go into the exact details about how we're proposing to roll this out. But scalable is particularly important here, isn't it? Because I think we just need to sort of lay both expectations for the drone operators and also comfort for other airspace users. That actually this isn't saying you've got a drone, you can just go for it and fly beyond visual line of sight in any situation, what we were initially working on is quite a big change for drone operators giving them a lot more freedom, but also actually doing it in a very controlled way for other airspace users, isn't it?

Colin Chesterton 3:43

That's correct. Yep. Safety will always underpin everything we do in this area. So whilst we might not be able to deliver everything industry wants tomorrow, we're establishing a plan that will work us through the steps that give us that confidence for our new and existing users to be able to integrate safely together.

Jonathan Nicholson (CAA) 3:58

How are we going to achieve this we're calling it four pillars, aren't we? So we've got four pieces of legislation, regulation, and how we're going to work with drone operators and other airspace users to achieve this, and we'll go through each of them in detail, a little bit of detail. But also probably worth saying at the moment, this is a bit of a teaser. So over '23 will be coming out with a lot more information about how this is going to be achievable. So you can't do it yet. This is about what's going to be happening in the near future. So '23 It's going to be really exciting. There's going to be a lot of stuff coming out on this. And it's going to be chunked into various little bits of work and potentially consultations as well. So the four things that we're working on to achieve this are pilot competency, the flight worthiness of the device, the risk assessment of the operator, and the airspace. So those are the four pillars that we're working on. So let's go through those in order then Colin so, pilot competency when we say pilot competency as been one of the four things we need to work on to achieve this, what's rolled into that?

Colin Chesterton 5:07

So at very high level terms, we need to understand that the pilot of a BVLOS is capable of flying that operation safely. In order to do that, what we want to do is the industry to have a simpler, more standardized mechanism to demonstrate the competency of the pilots when flying BVLOS. We're working with industry in developing the next phase of a formal pilot competency framework that goes beyond GVC to support that, that works progressing at pace at the moment. And we see next year, we'll be able to really start putting some stuff out and some of the detail around that to explain what we're doing and why we're doing it and actually get them frameworks in place.

Jonathan Nicholson (CAA) 5:43

So that will be about us being satisfied that the actual operator of the drone, the RPAS, actually has the competencies to operate beyond visual line of sight, because it is a whole separate thing, it's very different to saying I've got my drone its in sight I'm flying, I can see it, operating something a few kilometers away down a railway line is potentially a little bit different. And that's why we want to make sure that people that are operating it have that extra thing. But am I right in saying we want to make this very much as while we need to make sure people have the right skills, we want to make it as easy as possible for people to be able to achieve.

Colin Chesterton 6:21

Yeah, we're working with industry on that. So that a lot of the assessment for that will be done externally to the CAA so it's not a resource issue within the CAA but actually can be done in short order in advance of any applications and any applying for specific operations. We know that a pilot is trained to a specific standard to do specific operations. And that can be in place well in advance. And it slightly detaches it from the other processes that traditionally to fly BVLOS that an operator would have to go through.

Jonathan Nicholson (CAA) 6:50

Key point there is we're looking to industry to do this assessment. And then say to us, this person meets the requirements rather than us having to do tests or whatever as the CAA. So that's pilot competency, and then really important flight worthiness of the device. Because obviously, again, if something's going kilometers away from the person flying it, potentially getting involved in other areas, other aspects of human life, if you like, we need to have some kind of awareness and satisfaction over the actual device itself, don't we so that we calling flight worthiness?

Colin Chesterton 7:25

Yeah, absolutely that and we're looking to develop that in a very similar way that we are with pilot competency. So we'll work with industry to develop that framework and that formal set of competency requirements of the UAS to be able to fly a specific operations. And again, that will be done external to the CAA, it'll be something that can be assessed elsewhere to speed up that process. And again, you end up with an assessment that means when you make in your application for your operational authorization, you've got that there, you can say that that's already been cleared in the same way that your pilots been cleared to fly that level of operation.

Jonathan Nicholson (CAA) 7:57

So Colin, are we saying then I think at the moment for some elements, we as the CAA have to physically look and approve different drones. Are we saying now then that that wouldn't be the case, in lots of cases, we would actually devolve that to an external person.

Colin Chesterton 8:13

That's exactly it, Jonathan. So as we're looking to make these scalable operations, we recognize that we don't have the level of inspectors in the organization to be able to do that in a scalable way. And at the time, and speed that is required by industry. So it's around devolving that responsibility to a recognized flight worthiness assessment entity, so that they can do that assessment. And that can be done a lot quicker and a lot more efficiently than the CAA trying to conduct all of them assessments themselves.

Jonathan Nicholson (CAA) 8:38

Yeah, and those companies can resource up for that in a legitimate way that we shouldn't and couldn't so that makes absolute sense. And is replicated in other bits of aviation as well, where we devolve out to people for air worthiness, etc, as well. Okay, so that's flight worthiness. So the third of the pillars is risk assessment. Really important, I think a lot of approved drone operators are already to a certain level used to doing risk assessments or using risk assessments or developing risk assessments. But what's different here? What will be used as risk assessments in this new BVLOS world?

Colin Chesterton 9:13

So I think it's fair to recognize that the way we assess risk at the moment is it takes a long time, it's very time consuming for our inspectors and the sector team there. So what we're looking to adopt is a build on the JARUS SORA mechanism primarily for the UK. We believe this is a more suitable risk mechanism and we believe it can add again speed and efficiency to our processes there were using mechanisms such as predefined risk assessments, etc. It makes it easier for the operator to apply but also makes it easier for our teams to be able to go through that and very quickly identify the key bits of information required to make the risk assessment.

Jonathan Nicholson (CAA) 9:49

We've spoken about obviously, the airspace risk the mid air collision risk and working with other airspace users is anything that we're looking at also around the protection of uninvolved third parties. and the risk to them as well?

Yeah, absolutely. That's always something that we consider when we're looking at safety risks in the whole for any operation. When we're talking about the sort of restrictions, we're looking at bringing in, we're talking about opening up the market to the already established existing robust operations that take place at the moment, they've taking place in quite restricted ways. And it's about allowing those existing operators more freedoms to be able to fly without increasing the risk not just to themselves, but to any third party.

That makes absolute sense. And then the last of the four pillars is airspace, which is particularly important I know for other airspace users as well. So one of the things we quite often hear from other airspace users is their worry about having unmanned vehicles, RPAS drones, sharing the airspace with them, and the collision risk and how we separate everybody out in particularly what we call uncontrolled Class G airspace where it is a lot relied on those flying, seeing and avoiding other things without always the aid of electronic devices or radar or air traffic control. So what's the proposals for how we safely manage this from the airspace perspective.

The airspace work is really interesting, there's a lot going on in that area at the moment for us. And I think it's fair to say that, as I've already mentioned, safety underpins everything we're looking at, whether that's the risk of midair, the risk on the ground or risk to a third party. In that airspace, it's where it gets, you know, there are other users there, they operate in a traditional way. And that's where a lot of work and a lot of our understanding and safety requirements has come in. So I've lumped it into three key areas that we're looking at really around airspace, the first area we're looking at is around an atypical air environment, we've done a piece of work with an external consultancy, to look at what atypical might look like in the UK. And we're developing out our policies on that. And for us, in very broad terms to begin with, that is someone potentially operating within 100 feet of a building or 50 feet of a permanent linear structure, where the risk of midair collision is negligible or very small because of where they're operating. I think it's key to point out on an atypical air environment, is only the mid air collision risk that it mitigates. There will still have to be an operational safety case around that to look at the ground risks. And that's a piece of work happening at pace at the moment. And we think very early next year, we'll get our first policy out on that for industry to comment on to have that discussion. And that's something we'd like to progress further once we're more comfortable with the concept.

And that's really around, as you rightly say, negating or significantly reducing that midair collision risk, because within the constraints that you set out the dimensions away from whatever the drone is looking at, or photography or whatever that is so close to that thing that the drone is working on that we're significantly reducing the chance of coming into conflict with anything else in that airspace aren't we?.

Yeah, absolutely. And that's the initial premise. But we're also looking at other safety nets or potential layers that we can add in to, again further negate that, so we might look at the use of electronic conspicuity in that area, etc. And we'll also be liaising with our airspace teams to ensure that there's no other designated activity in that area that day, and how we can promulgate the information that someone's flying in that zone is going to be important as well. So we're trying to build up the safety nets as much as we can in that area. But primarily, there shouldn't be any other aircraft flying that close.

Yeah. But you will put in those extra layers on as well. Because also, am I right in thinking that once we successfully do this, all this is also adding to our intelligence for what we want to do in the future as well regarding even more BVLOS flight.

Yeah, absolutely. I think we're at a phase now where the industry is starting to want things. This is definitely an area that we've had a lot of call for activity. And we as safety regulators like to be able to collect data and existing data on what's happening. And we see this as sort of the first step to be able to look at that look at the flight hours get a better understanding of how these things operate, before we then make our next steps and assess where we can go in the future.

Great. So what else we got an airspace then?

So we're also really aware that the current use of TDA's as a mechanism is not sustainable.

For those who don't know, a TDA is a temporary restriction on airspace?

Yes, so it's a temporary danger area, we currently use them for some types of operation where we're putting BVLOS into the air, or we're putting RPAS or new users into that area. It's not sustainable, it makes it very much more complicated air environment or traditional aviation users. So we want to be able to move away from that we want to move away to bigger blocks of areas where actually we get a fully integrated picture. So we're looking at potentially using things like TMZs, but with the use of electronic conspicuity and some level of service around that.

And TMZs. Let's explain that to people

Transponder mandatory zones. However, changing policy last year dictates that it doesn't always have to be a transponder. It can be another piece of equipment subject to some specific requirements on that.

So that's about making sure that its kind of what we call a known environment, isn't it as much as possible so people know what else is going on, basically, through an electronic means.

Yeah, and again, that's another piece of policy we're developing now. And it's something that we'll have out there, I think next year, early next year that sets out where we want to go with that and what mechanisms we need to see in place. I mean, interesting for me, what we would really like to see on that is things like the Future Flight Challenge, and some of the operators are looking to push the boundaries already, we would like to use them to be able to test some of our policy writing decisions, and to see where we can go with that, and ensure that there's two way feedback on what we're doing, whether it works, whether it don't work, etc. So hopefully, it'll be exciting once we get that out lots of industry keen to play their part in that

And help build on that picture. And you talk about that data. You know, for us having that data to be able to show something is safe or acceptable, or what needs to change or where pinch points are or issues. That's what we want to base all our decisions on, isn't it?

Exactly, exactly that

Anything else on airspace.

I think lastly, it's probably the AMS

and sorry AMS?

Airspace Modernisation Strategy. I am a true regulator, I apologise. So the Airspace Modernisation Strategy is being developed now it's hopefully hitting the streets early next year, there's parts of that that really really develop out what we want to do in the lower airspace, and there's seven key deliverables there that look at things like TIS-B, FIS-B, that start to actually build up an environment where all operators are getting a lot more information about what's going on around them. And we see that as part of our building blocks to the longer term full integrated picture in the UK.

And when we say all operators, are we talking about Remote Piloted operators, drone operators, as well about them having that information about what is going on in the airspace that they're sharing.

Yes, so especially around the lower airspace, I think that's where we're going to see the most need for sharing the airspace. And it's there where we think the use of additional pieces of information for traditional general aviation, as well as the new operators is going to help inform them. So things like the weather, things like who else is in that environment, etc. And being able to broadcast that gives them that, as you say that situational awareness to be able to plan their activities.

Yeah, and a lot of these changes are just as beneficial to existing airspace users like general aviation, as they are to bringing the RPAS population and users into the airspace as well. So we've bringing sort of benefits around that we see for all parties.

Yeah, so the AMS very much looks at the benefits led approach, especially around the lower airspace. So there's more stuff in there that hopefully provides that benefits to all users.

Excellent. So that will be really good when we get that in. So this is all really exciting. I'm sure there's lots of RPAS drone operators out there going great. I've already set up my business to be able to look at this BVLOS work, I can see there's plenty of opportunities there for business. Their killer question is going to be so Colin, when can we do this?

So the atypical work I would really like to see out very, very early next year. So if we're not talking January, then February, I think that's one of our first tangibles for the industry. As much as there's lots of stuff going on inside the Authority to set ourselves up in the right way. This is the first piece we'll have out and following that, as these work streams develop, we'd like to give a bit more detailed comms on what's going on. Certain things do take time, certain changes of regulation, when they're required, they do take time, there's, you know, we can't hide by that. But what we can do is start to inform the industry of what's coming next and set out some clear timelines. So again, first quarter of next year, that's where we would like to be subject to the AMS approval being approved at government level. Again, there's gonna be a big push early next year, explaining what that means for airspace users across the board, not just RPAS, but you know, the general aviation community. So as that comes out, hopefully that builds that understanding of what can be done, what timelines we're working to, where we see the future environment, and also a two way street. I would like to know then how industry can help us, what industry can do, what trials can they do, to give us the data to ensure the safety to be able to push these policies through.

Excellent, so early '23, some next information and then reading on into later 23 as well. We've set up a webpage ca.co.uk, forward slash BVLOS So that's b-v-l-o-s, where you can find out a lot more. And obviously, subscribe to skywise. Subscribe to all of our alerts and we'll do more podcasts and more videos to keep people in the loop as well. And I guess at some point, we'll need to give those in the industry a bit of time to prep. If people are going to be doing the flight worthiness assessments and the pilot competency assessments we'll need to work with those people to bring them up to speed as well and give them plenty of time. won't we?

Yeah, so as much as we can once, we're in a better position and a more clear position. We want to be able to signpost to industry, what's required, what's coming, etc. We appreciate we're both on this journey. And we're going to have to help as much as we can to give them the time to evolve and develop and what's required.

Brilliant. Okay, well, thank you for listening, everybody. So watch this space. Exciting news on BVLOS. You can stay up to date with us through Skywise and through the podcast and all our usual comms, follow us on Twitter as well. UK underscore CAA. And as usual, anything else you'd like us to feature? Let us know. But that's it for today. Thank you very much for listening.

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