Australia’s flight safety body, the Civil Aviation and Safety Authority (CASA) is currently working on new rules for drone pilots, which will change the way you fly your quadcopter around the country.
CASA’s director of Aviation Safety, Mark Skidmore, flagged some of the rules set to be changed in a recent speech on “remotely piloted aircraft”.
Skidmore said that the first rule to change will be for commercial operators. Drones under 2kg will no longer need approval from CASA before commencing flight operations in relation to commercial work. Commercial pilots still need to obtain their operator’s certificates, however.
CASA will work on an expanded set of regulations for hobby and consumer-grade drones once the commercial weight approval rule has been implemented.
These new rules will address things like flying drones beyond the operator’s line-of-sight, operating a drone in an airspace where other aircraft are flying and autonomous drones that require little to no input from operators to fly.
In the meantime, CASA has been scouring YouTube for Aussie drone pilots breaking the rules in their aerial videos and issuing fines accordingly.