Jenny Beechener

Italy's National Civil Aviation Authority (ENAC) has granted Telespazio, a joint venture between Leonardo (67%) and Thales (33%), a Pre-Defined Risk Assessment (PRDA) authorisation to operate drones Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS). The approval was achieved due to Telespazio's use of its proprietary T-DROMES platform for the management of end-to-end services with drones and for the assessment of risks on the ground and in flight. It supports expansion of Telespazio's services the sectors of infrastructure monitoring, environmental protection and precision agriculture.

During a presentation at Airspace World in Geneva, PwC Poland announced its new GUTMA membership and presented its latest PwC Drone Powered Solutions document, offering strategic insights into how to thrive in the UTM ecosystem.

Korea is to join the growing group of countries associated to Horizon Europe, the EU research and innovation programme. The signing of the Association Agreement is expected to take place in the second half of 2024, pending the completion of all necessary ratification procedures on both sides. This will enable Korea's participation in HorizonEurope as of 2025.

Drone services company Skeye has received authorisation from the Dutch regulator to operate drone-in-a-Box systems beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) under a Light UAS Operator (LUC) certificate.

The partners of the Drone Operator Requirements Aero Initiative (DORAI) have formally adopted the second DORAI statement v02. The statement targets a harmonised and modular unmanned aviation industry. It helps drone manufacturers to:

SEA Aeroporti di Milano, Municipality of Varese and ASST Sette Laghi signed a letter of intent to demonstrate the transport of medical material from Milan Malpensa airport to the Circolo Hospital later this year using drones, travelling over densely populated areas, according to an

RefMap's UK partner, the University of Salford has completed the first of a series of experiments aimed at understanding the human response to drone noise. The ultimate goal is to develop a model to predict drone noise annoyance and aid the trajectory optimisation of drones to reduce the impact on communities. This first experiment investigated how varying UAS (drone) flight operations, vehicle types, and event quantities could affect noticeability and noise annoyance judgments in a controlled experiment incorporating 3D spatially-rendered acoustic environments. The University of Salford is also working on the development of a framework for the auralisation and acoustic simulation of drone operations to aid drone noise assessment and decision-making.

The first call for Catalyst Funding in Air Traffic Management (ATM) is officially open according to the SESAR ENGAGE 2 programme. Details are available on the dedicated

The SESAR Joint Undertaking has announced the results of its most recent Exploratory Research call. Among the awarded projects is CORUS five, which will deliver the fifth version of the European U-space Concept of Operations.

Ondas Holdings' American subsidiary American Robotics has formed a strategic partnership with ResilienX aimed at advancing the safety and reliability of autonomous systems, particularly those deployed for Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) applications, and in intricate operational environments. Through this strategic alliance, American Robotics will integrate ResilienX's IASMS solution, known as FRAIHMWORK, which is designed to monitor the performance of associated elements for BVLOS ecosystems, and within fully autonomous solutions, including the American Robotics Optimus System. Additionally, American Robotics will begin to resell ResilienX's software solutions.