COVID-19 Update

Today's announcement of an immediate move to Level 3 and then to Level 4 in 48 hours time make it impossible to continue with our face-to-face courses.

For those who are booked on courses, those courses are now deferred until we have some idea of when we will be back to Level 2 or below.

We are also working on a virtual course offering. We cannot do a virtual flight test, but we can potentially do the classroom component in a virtual setting that still allows for interaction with the instructor and your class mates. We are working through the logistics and what form this might take, but will let you know as soon as we are able.

Until then, stay physically distant but not socially isolated,

Andrew Shelley
Chief Executive

COVID-19 Coronavirus: ASMS is still open for business

In this time when coronavirus precautions are having a significant impact on the way that New Zealanders travel, conduct business, and go about their daily lives, I wanted to assure you that we are still open for business.

By taking sensible precautions we can continue to deliver courses and enable you to continue to operate your business.

The Ministry of Health advises that the symptoms of COVID-19 are:

• a cough;
• high temperature; and
• shortness of breath.

If you have any of these symptoms or have been in contact with someone who has been confirmed as having COVID-19, please do not come to the course. Your first priority is to self-isolate and telephone Healthline on 0800 358 5453. Once you have done that please let us know that you won’t be able to attend the course because of possible COVID-19 exposure, and we will hold your enrolment over to a future course.

Please also be aware that if a large proportion of people on a given course are unable to attend then we may have to defer the course until a later date so that we can continue to cover costs.

Of course, we may also have to defer a course if all of our instructors are required to self-isolate, or are unable to travel because of dependent children who are required to self-isolate. If that happens we will advise you as soon as possible that the course will be unable to proceed.

For more information on COVID-19 see the Ministry of Health website.

Human Harm from a Falling Unmanned Aircraft

ASMS Principal Andrew Shelley recently published rge paper "A Model of Human Harm from a Falling Unmanned Aircraft: Implications for UAS Regulation", published in the International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace.

In this paper Andrew quantifies the human harm, in the form of fatalities and skull fractures, which could occur as a result of an unmanned aircraft falling from a height. The analysis is used to establish the maximum height at which an unmanned aircraft can be flown over people to achieve a level of safety consistent with the rate of ground fatalities from General Aviation. The maximum height is dependent on the aircraft mass and the population density of people on the ground below.

The results are used to inform a critical evaluation of recent recommendations from the FAA-chartered “Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Registration Task Force (RTF) Aviation Rulemaking Committee (ARC)” and the “Micro Unmanned Aircraft Systems Aviation Rulemaking Committee”. The recommendations from these committees derive from assumptions that do not reflect the risks of flying over groups of people, and particularly over crowds.

The New Zealand CAA’s rules allowing flight over people who have granted consent are also considered, and this paper recommends that maximum height limits should be specified even when consent has been granted. The New Zealand CAA, in some instances, grant approvals to fly over people without consent, and parachutes are one factor considered in granting such an approval. Andrew analyses the ability of parachutes to effectively reduce the speed of descent, and show that for lighter aircraft a parachute may allow operation over relatively dispersed groups of people.

A copy of the full paper may be downloaded from: http://dx.doi.org/10.15394/ijaaa.2016.1120.