An article posted in the New Zealand Herald on 21st June last week described a drone delivery of auto parts over Auckland, between Penrose and Mt Wellington, a distance of around 2 km. Fastway Couriers is a delivery company that normally uses trucks or vans. They apparently teamed up with Flirtey, a UAV company based in Sydney. The delivery of the auto parts was claimed as a New Zealand first in the race to deliver parcels by drone, as first suggested by Amazon. The article also included a publicity video depicting the delivery.
All very exciting, but as far as this author is aware, the whole operation was illegal.
Currently, all UAV operations are covered by NZCAA rules Part 101, which covers gliders, parasails etc. and model aircraft. This rule Part is to cover recreational use only and limits model aircraft operations to not more than 400ft and not beyond line of sight of the operator.
Many UAV operators, including the AUT UAV team, find the limitation of line of sight rather frustrating, particularly as we have a very sophisticated programmable autopilot. However, those are the current rules under which we operate; publicity stunts like this can only antagonise the CAA rule makers and give UAV operators a bad name in the eyes of the public.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11468563
Labels: incidents, model, UAS regulations, UAV
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