CanardDrones, ANS Finland and Unifly have demonstrated that drones can be used to speed up airport navigational aid inspections without major disruptions to airport operations. On May 17 the three organisations worked together to perform six 40 minutes inspection batches in full coordination of all systems. During this operation ILS and PAPI systems where inspected by drones using UTM solutions provided by Unifly.
According to ANS Finland the operations were concluded within ATC opening hours mixing both ATM and UTM operations. CanardDrones undertook a PAPI verification in just 5:35 minutes, using a 10 minutes slot provided by the ATC. This operation encompassed the ATC and UTM coordination to allow CanardDrones to operate the system between civil and military flights, without a NOTAM request.
Unifly added its UTM ability to this live demonstration and delivered a successful integration of unmanned aviation into the operational environment of Pori airport. Via the Unifly software solution, the air traffic controller had full situational of awareness of all drone flights in the demonstration and handled them safely side by side with manned aviation.
“We worked alongside for 13 hours and were still able to create very fast interventions in a completely new way,” said Ronni Winkler Østergaard, Unifly Regional Manager, Scandinavia and Baltics. “I see this as a historical moment for unmanned aviation and I am proud that our solution provided full situational of awareness to the air traffic controller in the tower. As we saw during the demonstration, the air traffic controller was able to confidently operate both manned and unmanned aviation in a flexible, efficient and safe manner.”
