Skyports gets go ahead to self-authorise drone operations with Light UAS Operator Certificate

Sky­ports has obtained a Light UAS Oper­a­tor Cer­tifi­cate from the Irish Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty (IAA) which per­mits the self-autho­ri­sa­tion of Beyond Visu­al Line of Sight (BVLOS) drone flights.

A light UAS oper­a­tor cer­tifi­cate (LUC) is an organ­i­sa­tion­al approval cer­tifi­cate which assigns cer­tain priv­i­leges to a drone oper­a­tor. When the IAA is sat­is­fied that the LUC appli­cant has demon­strat­ed all the nec­es­sary capa­bil­i­ties, it issues the cer­tifi­cate and assign priv­i­leges to the drone oper­a­tors based on their lev­el of matu­ri­ty.

The priv­i­leges may allow the organ­i­sa­tion to self-autho­rise oper­a­tions, remov­ing the require­ment to obtain a pri­or autho­ri­sa­tion. The priv­i­leges may be one or more of the fol­low­ing:

This is the first such cer­tifi­cate issued by an EU reg­u­la­tor and is recog­nised in all Euro­pean Union Avi­a­tion Safe­ty Agency (EASA) mem­ber coun­tries, allow­ing UAS oper­a­tors to con­duct flights with­out first sub­mit­ting a dec­la­ra­tion or obtain­ing autho­ri­sa­tion from avi­a­tion author­i­ties before­hand. 

Sky­ports is one of a hand­ful of drone oper­a­tors glob­al­ly that have been grant­ed the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion to date after demon­strat­ing to the reg­u­la­tor that as an organ­i­sa­tion it is capa­ble of assess­ing the risk of an oper­a­tion itself.

Dun­can Walk­er, CEO of Sky­ports, said: “The Light UAS Oper­a­tor Cer­tifi­cate cre­ates new oppor­tu­ni­ties for Sky­ports in Europe – one of our key mar­kets.  Obtain­ing cer­ti­fi­ca­tion is a land­mark moment for our drone deliv­ery busi­ness that will enable us to deploy our ser­vice more effi­cient­ly and meet our cus­tomers’ needs more quick­ly. 

“Receipt of an LUC is also an enor­mous priv­i­lege for us as a safe­ty organ­i­sa­tion and reflects our com­mit­ment to achiev­ing the very high­est safe­ty stan­dards wher­ev­er we oper­ate.”

In prepa­ra­tion of its appli­ca­tion for the LUC, Sky­ports worked with Julie Gar­land, chief exec­u­tive of Ire­land-based Avtrain, one of Europe’s lead­ing drone train­ing and cer­ti­fi­ca­tion organ­i­sa­tions, which pro­vid­ed sup­port on the doc­u­men­ta­tion and pro­vid­ed EASA cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of Sky­ports’ pilots.

As an LUC hold­er, Sky­ports will now be able to expand its proven drone deliv­ery ser­vice with­in the med­ical, mar­itime and logis­tics sec­tors across Europe, build­ing on recent high-pro­file suc­cess­es most notably in the UK.

This includes the UK’s first COVID-19 test drone deliv­ery ser­vice in Scot­land with the NHS, as well as the oper­a­tion of an inter-island med­ical drone deliv­ery ser­vice between the Isles of Scil­ly for Roy­al Mail.

Speak­ing at the issuance of the Cer­tifi­cate, the Avi­a­tion Reg­u­la­tor / CEO Des­ig­nate of the IAA, Mr. Diar­muid Ó Con­g­haile, added: “We are delight­ed to be the first Reg­u­la­tor in the EU to issue a beyond visu­al line of sight Light UAS Oper­a­tor Cer­tifi­cate. The is an excit­ing devel­op­ment for the Euro­pean drone sec­tor; in this case pro­vid­ing Sky­ports with ground-break­ing access to a Euro­pean mar­ket of 500 mil­lion poten­tial cus­tomers.

“Drone ser­vices are an increas­ing­ly impor­tant part of the com­mer­cial avi­a­tion land­scape and pro­vide a com­pet­i­tive alter­na­tive to tra­di­tion­al ser­vice deliv­ery. We look for­ward to work­ing with the indus­try to facil­i­tate UAS inno­va­tion and com­pet­i­tive­ness with the high­est safe­ty and secu­ri­ty stan­dards, ulti­mate­ly pro­vid­ing ben­e­fits to con­sumers.”