Starting from September 10 to 14, 2018, the government of Si Chuan Province of China, together with the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) will be hosting ICAO's Third Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS/3) Symposium and ICAO's Second Unmanned Aircraft Systems Industry Symposium (DRONE ENABLE/2).  

These two symposiums will bring together key stakeholders from industry, academia, governmental and international organizations in the aviation sector over 49 countries to exchange research, practices, lessons learned and respective challenges. In the mean times, a drone industry exhibition will showcase the breadth of existing technologies, ongoing research and development in the commercial and non-commercial fields.

The rapid development of the Unmanned aviation brings opportunities while challenges the existing aviation operational environment. We need a new paradigm for regulating, licensing, training of remote pilots etc.

Remote Piloted Aircraft Systems(RPAS) are creating a new industry with large economic potential. In recent years, ICAO has making efforts to establish regulatory framework for drones, focusing on three aspects:

Firstly, the study on the due articles of the Chicago Convention of 1944, which might be applied to the drones used in certain areas. Secondly, due to the unique characteristics of RPAS components, which differ in many ways from manned aviation, ICAO has been trying to find new ways to safely accomplish the gradual transition of accommodation to integration into SARPs of the Chicago Convention of 1944, which probably will be made reference to by domestic provisions. Thirdly, RPAS is the priority for ICAO to take action. To ICAO, only RPAS can be integrated into the non isolated airspace and RPAS will be regulated similarly to the existing air traffic regime for the manned aircraft, which means a quite some time is needed for large commercial drones to take off formally.

DRONE ENABLE/2 will be an opportunity for networking, collaboration and coordination between civil aviation authorities, industry and both new and existing stakeholders as we move forward in this dynamic field. It also provides a unique opportunity to foster the emergence of a comprehensive and harmonized regulatory framework to support UAS activities.

Attention will be given to the complex issues presented by unmanned aircraft system traffic management (UTM) which need to be addressed collectively in order to integrate UAS into the aviation system. As we know that UTM is a "traffic management" ecosystem for uncontrolled operations that is separate but complementary to the FAA's Air Traffic Management (ATM) system. Hopefully, we can share the experience and updated UTM development from American friends.

We will have the chance to listen to the introduction of U-space, which is a set of new services relying on a high level of digitalisation and automation of functions and specific procedures designed to support safe, efficient and secure access to airspace for a large numbers of drones, with an initial look at very low-level (VLL) operations.

Well, show-time is here in China. Drone is a good thing but how to take advantage of it is another face of the coin, we need a universally accepted concept and system to promote its development by having a grand gathering after another to find way out. Congratulations!