India’s First No-Permission No-Takeoff (NPNT) compliant drone flight on the A200 Remotely Piloted Aircraft System (RPAS) has been completed successfully by Quidich Innovation Labs and Asteria Aerospace in the green zone identified by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), near Tumkur in Karnataka.
- This NPNT drone flight is under the MoCA & DGCA comprehensive policy on use of UAVs, which came into effect on 1st Dec 2018.
Background:
In 2014, DGCA had issued a ban on civilian use of UAVs in 2014 as it has been highly regulated in India by the Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) and DGCA. But in the following years, it became evident that UAVs offered significant advantages across diverse industry use-cases, ranging from Security and Surveillance applications, to Logistics and Aerial Cinematography. In this regard, MoCA & DGCA released a policy on use of UAVs under which NPNT requires all manufacturers to implement firmware & hardware changes that only allow flights authorized by DGCA to physically take-off.
About No Permission No Takeoff
It is a new concept for controlling UAV usage and traffic. This is a part of Digital Sky platform released by DGCA India. The user (pilot) is required to obtain a Unmanned Aircraft Operator Permit (UAOP) and the drone is required to have unique identification number (UIN). Before every flight NPNT clearance is needed.U0000001 is the UIN of the A200 micro drone that has completed the first NPNT compliant drone flight of India.
Point to be noted:
Quidich, in collaboration with the Drone Federation of India (DFI), has extended its services to Police Departments across multiple states, providing drones for crowd monitoring and surveillance operations during the ongoing Covid-19 crisis.
About Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA):
Minister of State (MoS)– Hardeep Singh Puri (Constituency- Uttar Pradesh)
Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA):
Director General– Arun KUmar
Headquarter– New Delhi
