Little time? At the end of the text there is a summary.
On September 7, 2018, the sky was fuller than ever. For the first time ever, German Air Traffic Control (DFS) counted more than 11,000 flights over the country - a record. Calculated over the whole year, exactly 3,346,448 machines were in the airspace. That too was a new high. And there was still a peak: on average, each flight landed 13.8 minutes later than indicated in the flight plan - and thus again two minutes later than in the previous year.
The strong growth of air traffic causes problems among other things with the air traffic control, which must distribute all machines over the sky. And in the next few years, hundreds of thousands of new aircraft are also pushing into the airspace, especially delivery drones and taxis.
"There are still many open questions to be resolved"
"At the moment, classical aviation and drones are still very separated," says Dagi Geister, who is researching the integration of unmanned aerial vehicles into the airspace at the Institute for Flight Guidance of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in Braunschweig. "It will be a few years before a passenger plane and a parcel drone travel in the same airspace."
Hartmut Fricke of the Institute of Aviation and Logistics of the TU Dresden predicts an "enormous turnaround for the entire air traffic management" in view of the emerging drone boom. At the 1st National Aviation Conference at Leipzig-Halle Airport, he refers on Thursday to estimates of the Single European Sky ATM Research Program. According to that, by 2050, seven million private-controlled drones are expected to be in European airspace, along with another 400,000 unmanned commercial aircraft.
The company must define clear safety rules for their operation, says Fricke. It is conceivable, for example, that slow-moving cargo drones should travel over rural regions at closer distances than fast airplanes in urban surroundings.
DPA
A DHL delivery drone in Guangzhou, China. In Germany, the company had tested deliveries in the Bavarian town of Reit im Winkl and on the North Sea island of Juist
At the moment, according to a response of the Federal Government to a request of the FDP faction in Germany about 455,000 unmanned aerial vehicles used privately, to another 19,000 commercially. This number will rise rapidly. Thomas Jarzombek, Coordinator of the German Federal Government for Aerospace in Leipzig, is convinced that the drone economy , the drone economy , is coming along: "We think that is a huge field in the future."
Some of the exhibitors will be demonstrating what is already possible today at the conference, which takes place in a huge hangar of the logistics group DHL. One of them is Benjamin Federmann from Kassel-based company Doks. He has his cargo drone delivAIRy with him, which his company has just tried out at the Duisburg plant of the steel group Thyssenkrupp. With her, they have brought laboratory samples from raw material processing in the Schwelgern factory port to the central laboratory. So far, this is done by an employee with a car. The drone can save up to 70 percent time, advertises Federmann.
Record for incidents at airports
"The integration of drones into the airspace, that's the most exciting question," says Federmann. Binding rules are important for this, which then apply to all. According to German air traffic control statistics, there were 158 cases of drone sightings near airports last year - also a record. The federal government has just commissioned DFS to develop an action plan for airport drone detection. "If drone makes nonsense, that is not conducive to those who want to work with it industrially," says drone entrepreneur Federmann.
At European level, there are now rules that should bring more security. The Federal Government will have time until next year to transpose this ordinance into national law. First and foremost, what drones and their pilots are allowed to do in the lower airspace up to a height of 150 meters - and what not.
In addition, a management system must be set up to electronically register the unmanned aerial vehicles, make them identifiable and electronically allocate them flight areas ("geofencing"). Later, drones should be able to recognize each other with technical help and avoid each other.
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The delivAIRy drone has a parachute certified by the US aviation authority FAA - so that it does not fall from the sky like a stone in case of a technical problem. A 5G radio module also has it on board. It could even remotely control them at a long distance.
In order to develop a working drone management system for all, Deutsche Telekom and DFS have teamed up. Their joint venture Droniq is to offer a platform that will enable "an entrance into the commercial enterprise of unmanned aerial vehicles", so DFS boss Klaus Dieter Scheuerle. Whether the Droniq system is really used, but is not fixed yet.
In the rather sparsely populated Harz foreland in Saxony-Anhalt, DLR is currently building up a "National Test Center for Unmanned Aerial Systems". The former commercial airport Cochstedt with its 2.6 kilometers long runway is used for this. In the coming months, however, it must first be rebuilt, still missing laboratories and workshops for the researchers and technicians. From Cochstedt, one hopes at the DLR, one day flight corridors could lead to the test of unmanned equipment in different parts of Germany.
As Chancellor Angela Merkel talks about drones during her appearance at the Leipzig conference, she praises their potential uses as "diverse, sometimes too diverse". That's why Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer has to take care of the regulation. It is important, according to the Chancellor, that the aircraft did not hinder each other "and that the population accepts it".
However, DLR experts discovered that public enthusiasm for parcel drones, for example, is kept within narrow limits. In a representative telephone survey of more than 800 people, 58 percent of the participants said they "did not agree" or "disallowed" the use of the flying donkeys. Just 17 percent were enthusiastic about it.
In summary: The number of private and commercial drones in the sky over Germany will increase sharply in the coming years. The Federal Government will have until next year to implement European rules for their integration into the lowest airspace. This would regulate flights up to a height of 150 meters. But that will not end the discussion about rules for the drone flight.
