The New Era of Aviation

The Traditional Aviation System Wasn’t Built for “Untraditional” Aircraft

The current system of air traffic management was designed and scaled to meet the needs of modern aviation, where thousands of manned aircraft, filled with passengers, share the skies at any given time.

With the proliferation of drones, the needs of modern aviation are changing. Rather than thousands of flights at any given time, there will be millions. And the variety of aircraft will increase exponentially, with drones for delivery, transportation, hobby and many other applications joining the skies.

There are not enough resources in the world to scale the current system to meet this need. The FAA itself has acknowledged that the current, human-centric paradigm cannot scale. And an alternative approach is necessary.

The answer is not to scrap the current solution, or to build a new one to replace it. The answer is to create an unmanned traffic management (UTM) system that operates side-by-side and exists in harmony with traditional aviation.

Preparing for the Drone Industry

This starts with laying the foundational standards. On the ground, these standards are widely known, shared, and adhered to: red means stop, green means go, everyone stays to one side of the road. Aviation authorities should establish rules that bring these standards to life and approve different traffic management solutions that meet their specifications.

Along with these common standards, we need to ensure interoperability. On the ground, horns, turn signals, and brake lights serve the purpose of communicating one vehicle’s intentions to another. A similar, common language needs to exist for drones to facilitate the sharing of intent and other data to enable conflict detection, remote identification and fairness.

Automation is the third piece of the puzzle. While traffic lights and human-less toll collection are examples of the automation that exist in today’s ground-based traffic management ecosystem, the aviation industry has the opportunity to lead by further embracing automation to enhance efficiency, safety and manage scale.