Safety concerns and regulations
Some of the issues that will be raised during Matternet’s shakedown period will be about safety — always a number-one priority with aviation projects that must share the skies with airliners. For instance, earlier this year a Lufthansa aircraft with 108 passengers on board had a near-miss with a drone as it approached Warsaw’s Chopin Airport. After the incident, which was first reported by the Aviation Herald, the pilots wondered aloud if the air traffic controllers were taking care of their airspace. Then, in July, a drone flew mere meters from an A320 near London Heathrow. All told, there were seven incidents between May 2014 and March 2015 in the U.K. alone involving drones.
The European Union is working on its own set of rules for drones to prevent these events, but the first step needs to be a single European sky for manned or unmanned aviation, according to Joost van Doesburg, airfreight policy manager for the European Shipper’s Council. Currently each European country has its own aviation authority, and the skies above Europe are a jigsaw puzzle of nationally managed jurisdictions. Van Doesburg said there are many international issues to be resolved en route to a single European sky, including the concerns from various national labor unions, but the Council is working toward drafting uniform rules.
Van Doesburg said the European Commission wants to facilitate this new unmanned delivery industry and encourage innovation, but it will have to come up with basic rules. For example, should a UAV be allowed to fly near an airport, sporting event or anywhere crowds of people congregate?
A spokesperson for DHL, which tested its own “Parcelcopter” last fall for pharmaceutical delivery, said the company would appreciate an open dialogue about joint standards to regulate testing and operation of civil drones. Such a discussion would include talks of safety, privacy and data protection, ahead of new applications of drones, including the delivery of urgently needed goods, such as medicine, to remote areas.
DHL tested its Parcelcopter in an experiment that ran between mainland Germany and the island of Juist in the North Sea, a distance of about 12 kilometers, from September to December 2014. The drone, weighing about 11 pounds, can reach a speed of up to 65 kilometers per hour at an altitude of 50 meters above the sea. The drone made 40 flights to and from the island, carrying urgently needed pharmaceuticals in its waterproof payload compartment. DHL said it doesn’t have any current, specific plans for using the Parcelcopters in normal delivery options for now, but that the test demonstrated the potential value of using drones.
Amazon and the FAA
As the various European governments continue to discuss the regulations around UAV use, Van Doesburg at the European Shipper’s Council said the use of drone aircraft is divided into four distinct phases. Currently, he said, aviation has moved well beyond Phase I – using small drones for inspections, agriculture and photography, for example – and entered Phase II, which is the military use of drones. The next, and much trickier parts are Phase III, the delivery of goods; and Phase IV, the transportation of passengers in unmanned aircraft. It’s no surprise that e-commerce giant, Amazon, is eager to move into Phase III as soon as possible. The Seattle-based retailer has been vocal about its desire to use drones for package delivery to its estimated 270 million tech-savvy customers, and has lobbied the FAA to drop the line-of-sight requirement, among other rules. In December 2013, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos announced on the U.S. television news program “60 Minutes” that his company was working on a drone delivery program it would call Amazon Prime Air.
One of the drones Amazon has developed weighs less than 55 pounds and can carry up to a 5-pound payload – and as much as 90 percent of the items Amazon sells weigh less than 5 pounds. (See sidebar at left.)
The FAA has loosened up somewhat. Les Dorr, a spokesman for the agency, said that, beginning in September 2014, the FAA started granting exemptions for drones under 55 pounds, and has issued more than 1,000 exemptions since then for uses such as surveying and commercial photography in a “tightly controlled, low-risk environment.” He said the FAA Reform and Reauthorization Act of 2012 eliminated the requirement that an operator of a UAV had to be a licensed pilot, if the intended use was commercial. He also said a summary exemption can be issued if someone is proposing an operation similar to, and using the same kind of drone as, an operation that had received exemption in the past.
The FAA is now working on final rules for commercial drones, which, Dorr said, would be in place by the end of this year. About 4,500 public comments have been submitted, he said. But once the FAA has completed the rules, there are other agencies, such as the Department of Transportation, that have to review them. He expects the process to be completed within a year.
Dorr said the agency will carefully evaluate Amazon’s suggestions. “We’ve accommodated Amazon’s requests, and given them an experimental airworthiness certificate to test a particular type of vehicle.” But he added that Amazon (which did not respond to Air Cargo World for this article), the AUVSI, and the AOPA “might have a different view.” When asked if the day is going to come when that hot new bestseller Amazon is selling might be dropped onto someone’s deck, Dorr said “it’s changing every week.” He said the agency’s number one concern is – you got it – safety.