With Part 108 on the rise, commercial drone traffic will become exponentially higher in the next year. While this is an exciting advancement for industry, the influx of traffic in the airspace means more opportunities for things to go wrong. Having a strong Safety Management System (SMS) is moving away from being a best practice to being a baseline expectation from both regulators and drone operators.
This roundtable discussion will bring together professionals from all corners of the industry to discuss the dos and don’ts of proper SMS within the commercial drone space.
Topics Include:
Preflight Risk Assessment
Leaders will share insights on how to look critically at your flight plan before every mission to identify potential areas of concern. This includes checking the aircraft itself, the flight path and any potential hurdles, the flight communication system, and electronic conspicuity.
Incident and Near-Miss Reporting
Documenting a malfunction or a near-miss is important data for drone teams to help ensure it doesn’t happen again. A good SMS should perpetuate a culture where pilots feel safe to report incidents without repercussions.
Ongoing Training
How to ensure you are up to date with the FAA requirements and how you can go beyond that minimum requirement to ensure the safety of your team. Getting specialized and recurrent training to keep skills sharp.
Tables 1-2: As Part 108 drives more drone traffic into the airspace, how is the industry’s approach to Preflight Risk Assessment evolving to keep up?
Tables 3-4: What does a truly effective Incident and Near-Miss Reporting culture look like, and what gets in the way of building one?
Tables 5-6: How should drone teams think about Ongoing Training beyond just meeting FAA requirements?
Tables 7-8: As SMS shifts from “best practice” to baseline expectation, what do you see as the biggest gap between how operators currently approach safety and what regulators and the industry now expect?
Tables 9-10: Looking across preflight assessment, incident reporting, and training, what’s one thing every drone operation should be doing to strengthen its Safety Management System?
