The Rector, Nigeria College of Aviation Technology (NCAT), Zaria, Mr Abdulsalam Mohammed, has called for immediate integration of Remotely Piloted Aircraft System (RPAS) into the nation’s airspace for safe operations.
Mohammed made the call at a RPAS Symposium organised by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) and the Federal Ministry of Transportation in Abuja, Tuesday.
He said it would be challenging to maintain separation between manned and unmanned aircraft in the airspace because of the difference in their operations.
The Rector said that there was need to have strong regulation in the industry to discourage indiscriminate use of RPAS, especially in environments where there were security challenges.
He said that regulation should be designed to address the safety concerns, particularly with the commercial drone users that may have around 12.5 kilogrammes of RPAS.
According to him, the regulatory requirements, most times, create unnecessary bottleneck for legitimate end-users like the media, health, medical and other industries.
Mohammed, however, advised that steps should be taken to discourage indiscriminate use of drones.
“RPAS operates below 500 feet; this means it is necessary to quickly integrate RPAS with other airspace users like the helicopters, general aviation, other aircraft used for recreation and aircraft operating around airport.
“Another key challenge is enabling RPAS to detect other airspace users, including other aircrafts and making RPAS detectable to other airspace users.
“On the safety concern, due to the rapid growth of the industry, RPAS and manned and unmanned airport operations may need to be quickly integrated,” he said.
He said that NCAT had the capacity to train drone users, and expressed hope that the college would be an approved regional training institution for RPAS.
Mohammed also called for training of users of manned and unmanned aircrafts as well as Air Traffic Controllers (ATCs) to ensure safe and secure usage of African airspace.
Also, , Managing Director, Nigerian Airspace Management Agency (NAMA),Mr Fola Akinkuotu said there would be challenges in integrating the RPAS system into the nation’s airspace because of the expected increase in traffic.
He said that the airspace, like the road traffic, when congested, needed better control and ways that accident could be discouraged because of increase in traffic.
According to him, the congestions are going to be heavy, and what NAMA has to do is to take actions that will mitigate the consequence of the increase.
“We will have to design systems so that increase in drone would not impart on civil or manned traffic that we have today.
“Do we have segregated drone corridors? Do we have drones only operated from a particular area? Do we have a system where we will allow them to go into controlling their own space?