CAAS and EASA Air Regulators Sign MoU for UAM

The Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty of Sin­ga­pore (CAAS) and the Euro­pean Union Avi­a­tion Safe­ty Agency (EASA) have signed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Under­stand­ing (MoU) to part­ner on Urban Air Mobil­i­ty (UAM), to sup­port the devel­op­ment, deploy­ment and safe oper­a­tion of Ver­ti­cal Take-Off and Land­ing (VTOL) air­craft, reports a press release.

The agree­ment signed by Han Kok Juan, Direc­tor-Gen­er­al of CAAS and Luc Tyt­gat, Strat­e­gy and Safe­ty Man­age­ment Direc­tor, EASA is to pro­mote Urban Air Mobil­i­ty such as fly­ing taxis, by estab­lish­ing stan­dards for the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and oper­a­tion of dif­fer­ent elec­tric air­craft.

The col­lab­o­ra­tion includes:-

Devel­op­ment of Reg­u­la­to­ry Stan­dards

: Devel­op­ment of reg­u­la­to­ry safe­ty stan­dards and relat­ed require­ments for the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and oper­a­tion of VTOL air­craft, includ­ing the com­pe­ten­cies of per­son­nel involved in the oper­a­tion of such air­craft, the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion require­ments for oper­a­tions in hot and humid envi­ron­ments and the require­ments for per­son­nel train­ing organ­i­sa­tions.

Out­reach 

: Strate­gies for out­reach to rel­e­vant stake­hold­ers on urban air mobil­i­ty includ­ing edu­ca­tion­al out­reach to the pub­lic and the indus­try.

: Analy­sis on pub­lic atti­tudes towards urban air mobil­i­ty and VTOL as a mode of trans­port in an urban envi­ron­ment. 

Con­fer­ences and Oth­er Activ­i­ties

: Joint organ­i­sa­tion of con­fer­ences, work­shops, talks and oth­er activ­i­ties on urban air mobil­i­ty.

Han Kok Juan, Direc­tor-Gen­er­al of CAAS, com­ment­ed, “In the last few years, we have seen quan­tum leaps in UAS and UAM devel­op­ment. The poten­tial ben­e­fits are tremen­dous. Real­is­ing them will require con­comi­tant devel­op­ment in reg­u­la­tion and reg­u­la­tors need to keep pace with tech­nol­o­gy and busi­ness devel­op­ments to assure safe­ty and secu­ri­ty and build pub­lic con­fi­dence and accep­tance.”

Luc Tyt­gat, Strat­e­gy and Safe­ty Man­age­ment Direc­tor, EASA, added, “We know that tra­di­tion­al­ly reg­u­la­tors lag behind indus­try devel­op­ments and inno­va­tions. Both this MOU and the wider sym­po­sium will con­tribute to reg­u­la­tors get­ting ahead of the tech­nol­o­gy curve in sup­port of our future safe­ty over­sight respon­si­bil­i­ties.”

Mean­while, the inau­gur­al Euro­pean Union/Asia Sym­po­sium on Unmanned Air­craft Sys­tems (UAS) and UAM, held in Sin­ga­pore, began this week on Tues­day and will end Fri­day. Over 140 par­tic­i­pants are attend­ing.

Joint­ly organ­ised by CAAS and EASA, this is the first time reg­u­la­tors from Europe and Asia-Pacif­ic are com­ing togeth­er to dis­cuss UAS and UAM reg­u­la­tion, along­side lead­ing indus­try play­ers and researchers.

Over 20 civ­il avi­a­tion author­i­ties from the two regions will par­tic­i­pate in the four-day sym­po­sium to engage indus­try play­ers and researchers, dis­cuss UAS and VTOL devel­op­ment and reg­u­la­tions, and under­take a field vis­it to the Mar­itime Drone Estate, to learn how Sin­ga­pore facil­i­tates the devel­op­ment of nov­el tech­nol­o­gy in a reg­u­la­to­ry test-bed envi­ron­ment.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.easa.europa.eu/en

https://www.caas.gov.sg/

(Top image: NASA)