Canberra UAV’s retrieval aircraft competing in the 2016 Medical Express event in Dalby, Queensland.

Some great news today. We received our approval to operate the 2018 UAV Challenge Medical Express event as a Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) operation. The approval comes from Australia’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) and allows the operation of unmanned aircraft in a more realistic scenario than ever before. In previous years we have operated the flight area with a large number of range marshals who remain in visual contact of the competing aircraft. With the new BVLOS procedures, the mission reflects better the reality of how medical package retrieval missions will operate in the future in the real-world.

The UAV Challenge has maintained a great working relationship with CASA over the history of the event and it is very pleasing that we are now at the point where competitors will get to experience real BVLOS missions. We thank CASA for their ongoing assistance in showing the world how unmanned aircraft technology can be used for the benefit of us all.