The certified category mainly concerns the transport of passengers by drone (air taxis). These provisions are still being drawn up. It may be several years before they enter into force.
The 'certified' category caters for the operations with the highest level of risk. Future drone flights with passengers on board such as the air taxi, for example, will fall into this category. The approach used to ensure the safety of these flights will be very similar to the one used for manned aviation.
For this reason, these aircraft will always need to be certified (i.e. have a type certificate and a certificate of airworthiness), the UAS operator will need an air operator approval issued by the competent authority and the remote pilot is required to hold a pilot licence. Longer term, we expect that the level of automation of drones will gradually increase up to having fully autonomous drones without the need of the intervention of a remote pilot.
Further information
Last modification 05.05.2023
