Most of the illegal “droners” run away from us and the police at home for coffee, Prague Airport admits
Václav Havel Airport handled 21 cases in cooperation with the police last year, and 32 cases in the first eight months of this year. It was always a drone detected in the “no drone zone towards the airport area”. Most of the guilty persons cannot be identified. Jan Kolář from Prague Airport, who is responsible for the area of security technologies designed to protect the airport, stated this at the Alliance for the Unmanned Aviation Industry conference on Tuesday.
“People know they’re flying where they shouldn’t. So 94 percent of flights last between two and five minutes. Before we send the message to the police, they receive it, react and come to the place, the people in question are already at home drinking coffee. Unfortunately, catching the perpetrator is a matter of chance, which is a problem,” Kolář said. “Ruzyně” will thus further deepen its cooperation with the Civil Aviation Authority.
In the first half of the year, the airport moved traffic to a secondary runway for three months while the main runway was repaired. “A lot of people thought it was a good idea to fly right on the runway. We managed to catch a few of them,” Kolář added, adding that there are more flights in the center of Prague.
The increasing number of incidents stems from the rapid increase in commercial drones used by amateurs. The prices of drones have fallen significantly, so for a low price of tens of thousands of crowns, you can buy a machine that the user can use to fly kilometers away, both horizontally and vertically, even though this violates the law. According to the current legislation, the pilot is only allowed to fly as far as he can see the drone with his eye – usually up to a distance of hundreds of meters.
The Civil Aviation Authority registers 41,000 drone operators and almost 44,000 remote control pilots. The Czechia thus belongs to the European countries with the ratio of the highest number of registered users in Europe, Vítězslav Hezký, the spokesman of the Civil Aviation Authority, said at the conference.
The vast majority are dominated by drones from the Chinese manufacturer DJI, which has dominated the world market for commercial drones since the beginning of their boom. Last year, the Chinese held more than half of this global market, DroneAnalyst reported.
The consequence is also an increasing number of sanctions. While in 2019 the ÚCL registered 26 proceedings, by the end of August this year it had already conducted 56 proceedings – some of which concern pilots who flew drones over the fire in Hřensk and violated regulations. From 2019 until now, the office has issued fines totaling almost 1.4 million crowns.
The conference participants from the Ministry of Transport, ÚCL, Air Traffic Control and other institutions promise to ensure greater safety, among other things, by harmonizing national legislation with European legislation. Newly, the drone operator could have the obligation to be electronically visible and share the location of the drone with the given air traffic control service provider, Vlado Foltin, project manager of the EU Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), said at the conference.
A significant change in the rules came on the last day of 2020. Since then, practically everyone who wants to fly a drone has had to register and pass an online test. The representatives of the state are promising further progress from the pending amendment to the Act on Civil Aviation.
In addition to legislative amendments, state institutions want to use more of their own drones for greater protection against drones. For example, ŘLP now wants to focus on their use to protect the state’s critical infrastructure, which includes, for example, important power plants.
Prague Airport is also gradually expanding its drone squadron, although not always for security purposes. “We use them, among other things, to inspect the roofs and envelopes of airport buildings, which are often old and in need of renovation. Thanks to 3D, we reveal where the heat leaks are, and adapt the reconstruction and save costs,” Kolář described.
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