Certification Issues On UAVs: The Communication From The European Commission And The Italian Case

Introduction

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), commonly known as drones and also referred to as remotely piloted aircrafts (RPAs), are increasingly taking up global airspace, a trend that is expected to increase exponentially in the following years. Therefore, opening the European market for UAVs, i.e. authorizing and regulating the civilian use of drones, is an important step towards the aviation market of the future. However, the European regulatory framework on the matter, while other global such as the US are taking the lead, building on expertise in the field of large military RPAS. Since the International Civil Aviation Organisation's (ICAO) standards require that States authorize UAVs in order for them to be able to fly, certification is a necessary preliminary step that should be looked at in order to allow the European aviation industry to be competitive at global level.

The Communication from the European Commission

The European Union is seeking to establish more comprehensive rules for the integration of drones into its airspace. On April 8th 2014, the Commission issued a Communication to the Parliament and the Council, under the title "A new era for aviation. Opening the aviation market to the civil use of remotely piloted aircraft systems in a safe and sustainable manner". This document set out the Commission's guidelines on how drone operations should be addressed within the framework of European policy. The main goals of legislative action on the matter were said to be to enable the progressive development of the commercial drones market while safeguarding the public interest.

In fact, the Communication responded to the call of the European manufacturing and service industry to remove barriers to the introduction of RPAs in the European single market. This technology is ready to make the shift from being purely military equipment to becoming a reliable new technology for civil use, the Commission rightly claims. In order to their full potential, drones should be able to fly like 'normal' air traffic and be integrated among 'normally piloted' aircraft in non-segregated airspace, i.e. airspace open to all civil air transport.

Certification would not only provide the rules to manufacture the aircraft, but also, even more importantly, gradually allow operations, so that industry can gain valuable practical expertise and progressively develop. The creation of such rules to allow civil UAV operations has to be combined with...