The European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) has launched the first survey for manufacturers of unmanned aircraft systems, drones or UAS that manufacture the aircraft themselves or kits for them, to evaluate existing trends and future growth of the drone sector in the civil market of the European Union. This information will be used to support future development of UAS regulatory material.
EASA encourages manufacturers who design drones and kits to install on drones or who provide additional systems, such as parachutes or safe flight termination systems, to respond to the survey by February 9, 2024 at the following link:
https://ec.europa.eu/eusurvey/runner/Impact_Reg_2019_945
The survey will assess the number of drone models currently used in the European Union civil market and estimate how this market will evolve. Additionally, the survey will cover the development of kits by manufacturers (other than the drone manufacturer) that will be installed on drones to reduce impact dynamics (e.g. M2 as defined in the SORA study, such as a parachute) or to provide enhanced containment (for example, as defined in SORA step 9 as a safe flight termination system).
It would be recommended that drone manufacturers who intend to use their drones for any type of activities respond to this survey, and that regulators can evaluate the entry into the market of new aircraft with class C5 marking or the development of kits that convert a aircraft with class C3 marking into one with C5 marking, and thus be able to meet the regulatory requirements of the STS-01 flight category, and be able to stop flying the national standard scenarios, which have an expiration date.
