{"id":13588,"date":"2019-08-24T15:04:19","date_gmt":"2019-08-24T15:04:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/?p=13588"},"modified":"2019-08-24T15:10:04","modified_gmt":"2019-08-24T15:10:04","slug":"airbus-aerial-receives-waiver-for-urban-bvlos-uas-flight-operations-over-populated-areas-in-north-dakota","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/state-news\/north-dakota\/airbus-aerial-receives-waiver-for-urban-bvlos-uas-flight-operations-over-populated-areas-in-north-dakota\/%20","title":{"rendered":"Airbus Aerial Receives Waiver for Urban BVLOS UAS Flight Operations Over Populated Areas in North Dakota"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Airbus Aerial has been granted a waiver by the Federal\nAviation Administration (FAA) to conduct Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS)\nUnmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) operations in Grand Forks, ND without the need\nfor a visual observer. The waiver allows Airbus Aerial to conduct such\noperations as part of North Dakota Department of Transportation\u2019s UAS\nIntegration Pilot Program (IPP) – a public\u2013private partnership sponsored by the\nFAA to help define the regulatory framework for drone operations and their\nintegration into the national airspace system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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eBee<\/strong><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

“UAS are a critical aspect of the future of aviation in\nAmerica \u2013 and, in fact, globally. We are honored to be a part of such an\nimportant, historic effort,” said Jesse Kallman, Head of Airbus Defense\nand Space\u2019s Intelligence business activities in North America. \u201cWaivers to this\nmagnitude are not achieved unless you have an innovative team of partners that\nare extremely dedicated, working for the advancement of UAS integration\ninitiatives while keeping safety at the forefront,\u201d says Russ Buchholz, UAS\nprogram administrator for NDDOT\u2019s Integration Pilot Program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2018, the US Department of Transportation selected NDDOT\nas one of 10 state, local or tribal entities to participate in the FAA\u2019s UAS\nIPP. The North Dakota team is working to safely incorporate UAS technology in\nthree core challenge areas: conducting flights over people, night operations\nand BVLOS operations without the need for visual observers (VOs).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Airbus Aerial work will focus on working with Xcel\nEnergy to deploy a SenseFly eBee Plus fixed-wing UAS to fly BVLOS over the\nright-of-ways of Xcel Energy\u2019s distribution networks in residential\nneighborhoods. This work is critical in equipping the utility industry to\nappropriately assess and utilize UAS and enjoy the benefits of a cost effective\nand scalable program across their entire network. BVLOS\/OOP (Operation over\nPeople) operations are the only way to appreciate a significant increase in ROI\nwith UAS technology and as the scale grows, the lessons learned and benefits\nwill expand into new markets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With more than 2,500 flight hours of BVLOS operations\nexperience from military and civil operations, the Airbus Aerial team is\nwell-experienced with this aspect of drone operations. However, the regulatory\nenvironment outside of governmental operations is much different. A novel\nmethodology was used in the application for waivers from the FAA through the\nwork by North Dakota\u2019s IPP team (NDDOT, Northern Plains UAS Test Site and its\npartners). The approach is multi-pronged in that it advances operations through\nrisk mitigations and reliability metrics with known platforms like SenseFly\u2019s\neBee Plus by greatly expanding on previously approved waivers and expanding\noperational envelopes. Underlying this approach is a reusable and adaptable\nframework to accelerate aircraft\/operation waiver approvals utilizing a\nquantifiable risk-based methodology.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Airbus Aerial has been granted a waiver by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to conduct Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) operations in Grand Forks, ND without the need for a visual observer. The waiver allows Airbus Aerial to conduct such operations as part of North Dakota Department of Transportation\u2019s UAS […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[54,127],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-north-dakota","category-unmanned-systems"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13588"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13588\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13593,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13588\/revisions\/13593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}