Madrid, 5 June 2023 (ESA)

From AESA we have developed a series of guide material to facilitate the drafting of the documentation that a UAS operator needs to operate in a specific category, both to apply for operational authorisation and to operate in a national standard scenario.

Remember that the ‘specific’ category includes those UAS operations with an average risk that cannot be carried out in an open category. In order to be able to operate there, it is necessary for an operator registered in Spain to apply for and obtain an operational authorisation issued by EASA or to submit a declaration in respect of an operation that conforms to a standard scenario.

To be able to provide the documentation that a UAS operator needs to be able to perform any operation in a specific category, we have prepared the following documents: Guide to the contents of the Operations Manual, Generic Operational Risk Assessment Guide, guidance material on the justification of the containment level, and indicative Excel for the calculation of the adjacent area.

1. Guide to the contents of the Operations Manual. It is an explanatory document indicating the structure of the Manual and its annexes. In order for an Operations Manual to be complete, it must have a generic part and at least an annex describing an authorised operational concept (ConOps) or standard scenario, as shown in the figure:

Therefore, several formats depend on this guide:

• Generic Operations Manual format. It is a document in Word that operators must complete and modify according to their operations and organisational structure, being valid for any type of operation within the specific category (authorisation or operational declaration).
• Formats of the annexes to the Concept of Operation for which the operator requests authorisation or is enabled respectively. The Operator’s Operations Manual will have as many separate, attached documents as ConOps in specific category are within its operation. The template has been developed for:
  • STS-EN-01
  • STS-EN-02
  • They need authorisation.

Additionally, it has been developed:

2. AGeneric Operational Risk Assessment Guide, which complies with the requirements of Article 11 of Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2019/947 of 24 May 2019 and which is based on the SORA (Specific Operations Risk Assessment) methodology, adopted by EASA as Article 11 AMC.

The purpose of this document is to provide UAS operators with an appropriate format in which they can structure their operational risk assessments to ensure that all phases of the operation are safe.

Due to its complexity, other documents related to the previous guide have been prepared:

3. Indicativeaterial m regarding the justification of containment levels, according to step 9 of the SORA methodology.

4. Finally, an Excel template is made available to operators that serves as guidance for the calculation and justification of the adjacent area.

It is important to note that these documents have been drafted for the sole purpose of assisting UAS operators, based on the latest published review of the “Easy Access Rules for Unmanned Aircraft Systems” (September 2022). They may require variations based on future amendments to Implementing Regulation (EU) 2019/947 and its Acceptable Means of Compliance and Guidance Material.

You can consult all this support material in the Drones/UAS area of our website.