Credit to British CAA for pressing ahead on sensible integration of UAVs into British air space. This document addressing congested cities including London.
1 Introduction
1.1 The purpose of this Information Notice is to provide guidance to operators of Small Unmanned Aircraft (SUA) and Small Unmanned Surveillance Aircraft (SUSA) who wish to operate within congested areas in relation to towns and cities. The latest generation of commercially-available SUA have very advanced capabilities in relation to their size and cost; this has led to a surge in their utilisation for a wide range cinematographic and survey tasks and an increasing demand for their employment in urban areas. Operations in urban areas require an additional understanding of the complexities of the environment and of the safety and operational limitations that are suitable for London and other towns and cities.
1.2 In addition to the general guidance on areas of operation in this Information Notice, additional specific airspace guidance for operators wishing to undertake aerial work and surveillance (filming and photographic) operations within London is given in paragraph 5. Most of the principles and procedures described will also apply to other large towns and cities within the UK. London has been featured due to its combined characteristics of population density, commercial air traffic volumes, large blocks of controlled airspace down to the surface, two major airports, a low-level helicopter route system, a central licensed heliport and several specialised restricted areas.
1.3 All reference to SUA and SUSA in this Information Notice should be interpreted to apply to other aircraft of the same category but that may be known by an alternative name such as ‘Drone’, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS), Remotely Piloted Vehicle (RPV), Remotely Piloted Aircraft System (RPAS) etc.
Full document here:
http://www.caa.co.uk/application.aspx?catid=33&pagetype=65&appid=11&mode=detail&id=6208
Comments
Dennis, sounds like a good plan, you'd be welcome. I think there is a bit of a relationship already. We get loads of travel adverts on our media inviting us to holiday specifically in your state. Looks great.
Given this and some other unrelated issues here in the USA, i will petition to have California (my state) secede from the United States and join the British Commonwealth.... At least the British are facing up to the issue.
dennis
Not invented in the USA so the FAA will ignore ;-) Will be speaking to a man from the CAA at Farnborough and recording it so will ask if anything else is in the pipeline.
This is great, seems very sensible and fair.