Increase in FAA Authorizations Granted Via Section 333 Exemptions

My last post discussed the growth in the number of commercial UAV operators in the UK. I also wanted to look at the way things are moving in the US.

Things were slow to get going as but the FAA is now getting through it's back-log of what are refereed to as  Section 333 Exemptions. As with the UK data, the published list of operators shows an increasing growth rate.

Increase in the number of UK UAV Operators with CAA PFAW Certificates

Commercial operators of UAVs in the United Kingdom have to obtain what is referred to as a Permission for Aerial Work (PFAW) certificate from the Civil Aviation and they publish a list of Small Unmanned Aircraft (SUA) operators.

In The number has been increasing rapidly from just over 200 operators in May 2014 to 1702 operators as of 20-May-2016. I thought it would be interesting to plot the trend.

I'm no statistician but I thought a curved trend-line fitted better than a straight line as the rate of growth appears to be increasing. The average growth so far this year has been at a rate of around 80-per-month.

It is likely that there is a bit of a bubble effect reflected by the media attention given to UAVs / drones, but nevertheless it doesn't look like things are easing-off just yet.

Skytech 2016

Many thanks to everyone who came to see us Skytech 2016 at the end of January. I hope you enjoyed the exhibition and spotted some promising opportunities.

It was our second year at the event and it was particularly interesting to see how quickly the UAV industry is developing.

Our Wing GCS Ground Control Station has moved on quite a bit too since we launched the product last April. Here are some photographs of the latest build.

Wing GCS (before we've fitted the aerials)

Wing Control Device