The Spanish Air Navigation Agency (AENA) has authorised Canard Drones to perform specialised activities in controlled airspaces, including air traffic service providers.
In this way, CANARD is authorised to perform its calibration and inspection services in all Spanish airports managed by AENA, in day and night operations, a great step forward for the company, which already offered these services in international airports outside of Spain.
Spanish legislation is much more restrictive than that of other countries when it comes to granting authorisations for operation in non-segregated airspaces, such as operating airports. In this sense, certain restrictions that prevented the provision of inspection and calibration services, have been overcome, and CANARD can serve in the large international airports of AENA such as Madrid Barajas or Malaga.
CANARD has been working with AENA in several Spanish airports for several years, but the operations had been carried out during non-operational hours. At the same time, in international airports, such as Charles de Gaulle in Paris, France, CANARD has been providing inspection and calibration services for some time, with total normality.
The automatic procedures and software tools developed by CANARD allow inspections to be carried out consistently in a few minutes (about ten minutes for a PAPI system, and only three minutes for ALS). The company is developing digital vision and learning algorithms, to achieve faster inspections and achieve a reduction in costs and time. This complete package for lights and tracks at the airport is already available.
CANARD carries out the entire operation, or there is the possibility that it may be operated by a customer or third party authorised, trained and validated by the company, who is the provider of the maintenance and support of the operation.
Finally, the Madrid start-up is also developing a solution for the maintenance and inspection of ILS, VOR and other radio-aids. This development is very advanced and the two complete packages, lights and track inspection, and radio-aids, will be available to the market early next year.