Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems: Some Unexplored Issues

Abstract

The thirty-sixth Session of the Legal Committee (LC) of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) was held from 30 November–3 December 2015. One of the items under discussion was on legal issues pertaining to Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS) as a new component of the civil aviation system. The item had been placed on the agenda by the Council of ICAO – the governing body of the LC – pursuant to a discussion that emanated from the thirty-eighth Session of the ICAO Assembly held in 2013, whereby the Assembly had recommended that the Council further study the subject of RPAS. At the LC discussion, the ICAO Secretariat presented the LC with a paper which discussed the current regulatory position of RPAS under various existing instruments and offered various interpretations of terminology as background information for the LC. The Secretariat paper was purely informative and analytical in nature, presumably intended as a catalyst for discussion. Although the paper was acknowledged to be of high quality (as it well deserved) and endorsed as such by the majority of members of the LC, the Committee also noted that certain issues relating to the liability regime remained unaddressed. Consensually, the LC was of the view that the legal study on RPAS should remain in the agenda of the LC for some time, until all relevant legal issues on the subject were thoroughly studied and examined. Some of the issues identified by the LC as requiring attention were: the definition of aircraft in flight in the context of RPAS against the backdrop of existing legal instruments; operations over the high seas; cross-border operations; and the responses of Member States to a questionnaire that should be sent by ICAO. This article examines both the ICAO Secretariat paper leading to deliberations of the LC at its thirty-sixth Session as well as some unexplored legal issued relating to RPAS.