Official Points To A 'Process Issue' Due To The High Number Of Aircraft

Australia's Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) has indefinitely postponed a plan to require the registration of commercial and hobby drones, with no new deadline set for the amendments to its drone regulations to go into effect.

Inside Imaging reports that initially, the registration amendments were targeted for implementation in July, 2019, but were delayed until the end of last year. Now, according to the report, the amendments are still on the table, but there is no date for registration to be required.

The registration amendments "will be delayed beyond the anticipated start date but we don’t have a new start yet," Peter Gibson, CASA corporate communications manager, told Inside Imaging. "The first phase will be for commercial drone operators, not recreational.  Recreational is some years off."

When registration was first proposed, recreational users were to have been the first to be required to register. Now, Gibson said, recreational operators will get an additional reprieve from registration "due to the potentially high number of drones – we need to get our systems working properly with the smaller number of commercial operators first. The delay to the planned start date for commercial is just a process issue."

(Image from file)

FMI: Source report