CANBERRA, March 27 (Xinhua) -- Australia's peak aviation safety authority has announced it will introduce mandatory licenses for drone pilots from July onwards.
Peter Gibson, a spokesperson for the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA), told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) on Wednesday that for the first time anyone who wants to fly a drone weighing more than 250 grams will have to receive CASA accreditation.
It will also introduce mandatory registration for drones, making it easier for authorities to identify pilots who use drones illegally.
Data obtained by CASA will be kept in a database, allowing the government to track how many drones are being used in Australia and where they are being flown.
"It will certainly give us big advantages in terms of complaints or reports of drones being flown improperly or against the safety rules," Gibson told the ABC.
"We'll have a starting point to know who flies drones in that area, what sort of drone they fly.
"For the first time we'll have an overall picture of the drone sector ... probably there are tens of thousands, possibly even 100,000, but at this point we don't know."
The announcement comes as CASA prepares to manage a significant increase in the number of drones in Australia's skies with Alphabet, Google's parent company, preparing a mass roll-out of its drone delivery service.
A trial of the service, known only as Project Wing, in the suburbs of Canberra in 2018 was hailed a success, prompting the company to build a permanent Project Wing warehouse in the city.
"Clearly the unmanned traffic system is the key to safe and efficient drone operations, and all the players that are working in these areas are developing their own systems," Gibson said.
"We are working on that already ... it's not simple."
Community groups in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) have told an ongoing inquiry into drone delivery in Canberra that the noise generated by the drones is unbearable - a view that was dismissed by ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr.
