‘Near People’ Authorization

Drone manufacturer DJI announced this week that nine of their drone models meet new standards established for Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS) in the new Part 9 of the Canadian Aviation Regulations that come into effect June 1, 2019.

In those regulations, Transport Canada-Civil Aviation sets standards from characteristics and reliability that a drone must meet to be allowed to operate ‘near people’, which is defined as the operation of a drone within 30 metres, measured horizontally, of any person not associated with the operation.

“[DJI] has put months of hard work into documenting…safety expectations, reliability guidelines, testing standards and other processes to comply with Transport Canada’s new requirements,” said DJI’s director of technical standards Javier Caina.

He added, “DJI customers choose our drones because they know our longstanding history of making powerful, reliable and dependable aerial platforms, and we are proud to say they can continue using our products under the new Transport Canada system beginning June 1.”

Previously, drones operated commercially in the vicinity of people unassociated with the operation needed a special operating certificate, which could takes weeks to obtain.

DJI models meeting the new standard are M600 Series, M200 Series, M200 V2 Series, Inspire 2, Mavic 2 series, Mavic Pro, Mavic Air, Phantom 4 series and Spark.

ADS-B IN For DJI Drones

DJI also announced recently that they will soon equip consumer drones weighing more than 250 grams with ADS-B IN technology. This will allow the drone operator to avoid collision with  ADS-B OUT-equipped aircraft on their operating console. AirSense, which is what DJI calls their system, will be able to detect appropriately-equipped aircraft that are still kilometres away.

With the pending full implementation of ADS-B OUT in much of the U.S. airspace coming into force on January 1, 2020, this technology will be more useful than in Canada, where large-scale installation of ADS-B OUT equipage in other than commercial airliners (phase 3 of the mandate) is still awaiting a mandate from Transport Canada.

Unaltered photo by Leigh Miller