After many work group meetings SA CAA has finally reached agreement with CUAASA and Industry on the details of the “Phase 1 RPAS Regulations”.The decision was made by the SA CAA senior management that South Africa must have legislation in place by end March 2015. A dead line that put them under massive pressure.
CUAASA and CAASA told CAA that we rather want safe and usable legislation and that the date is not our goal. Having said this we had to find the middle ground.
We are of opinion that although we as Industry achieved almost all our “Requirements to operate”, SA CAA are still over regulating in some instances. We agreed with SACAA that this workgroup would have a critical and ongoing task to even monthly update and “Fix” the holes. The areas where we believe they over regulate are not a real problem for Industry but it will just make their already difficult task impossible to perform.
We are very glad that South Africa will be able to operate B-VLOS and Night flights as it is a critical requirement in South Africa and that we also “Created” R-VLOS Restricted Line of Sight for operators who will be flying in between ‘High buildings and natural obstacles”.
The real challenge will be “Phase 2 and upward” as the light units is a start but our Industry is already operating much larger systems commercially!
The full submission can be downloaded here.
Source: CUAASA
A short overview of the proposed new regulations can be found at http://www.dronecrew.co.za/legal-status-of-rpas-operation-in-south-africa .