AirData, the operational intelligence platform powering the world’s leading drone programmes, just announced that it has passed 65 million drone flights, covering more than 850,000 drones and 470,000 pilots worldwide.
Those organizations are the ones Part 108 would govern. The rule moves accountability for a flight from the individual remote pilot to the operating organization, which becomes responsible for showing that its personnel
are qualified, its aircraft are airworthy, and its operations follow approved procedures.
It requires the organization to maintain a flight data collection system, keep qualification and training records for its people, and show that the person overseeing a flight is current on the aircraft being flown. Flights, personnel, maintenance, and incidents are the categories the rule names, and they are the categories AirData has captured for a decade.
Scale is also what makes the analysis possible.
“Sixty five million flights is not a vanity number for us. It is why we can tell an operator that one battery is aging differently from the other nineteen packs of the same model on the same duty cycle. No single fleet is large enough to produce that comparison on its own.”
— Eran Steiner, Founder and CEO, AirData
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Those flights come from 180+ drone types and 60 flight apps, so they reflect mixed fleets rather than a single vendor’s ecosystem. AirData analyzes every battery cell after every flight and recognizes more than 880 pilot certificate types worldwide for currency tracking.
Pacific Gas and Electric flies across a 70,000-square-mile service area in California under a BVLOS waiver, and uses AirData to automate the flight, personnel, and maintenance evidence that waiver requires. Its program is an early example of the organization-level documentation Part 108 would apply more broadly.
“Implementing AirData has centralized our flight logging, compliance reporting, and maintenance tracking in an automated and proactive manner. This allows our pilots, technicians, and administrators to focus on their respective missions with confidence that regulations are being followed.”
— Kellen Kirk, Manager of UAS and Fixed Wing Operations, Pacific Gas and Electric
AirData is a member of the Commercial Drone Alliance and has published a business readiness guide for the rule, The AirData Blueprint: is available here: Operational readiness for the Part 108 era.
Source: AirData