Tertiary students at Charles Darwin University, Australia can now get a commercial drone licence as a part of their degrees. The program was initiated by the School of Environment where they had a two-week intensive unit which introduced the students to the advanced and evolving world of remotely piloted aircraft systems (RPAS). The course is run by the University in association with training provider Fly UAS.

The unit was coordinated by Dr Hamish Campbell who described the ability to fly drones as a highly sought after skill which is most likely to grow ten-fold over the next decade as the market for services has predicted. Dr Campbell also told that the drone technology was used widely to collect information in the environment sector, along with the disaster and emergency management, mineral resource extraction, agriculture and media.

He also added that the course that has been introduced is one of its kinds in an Australian university and it aims to provide the students with the licensing, knowledge-base and practical skills to operate remotely piloted aircraft safely for commercial needs while adding these essential skills to their degrees. The Civil Aviation Safety Authority needs the pilots of an RPAS to be licensed while operating an unmanned aircraft for commercial ventures which includes research and teaching.

Students are also likely to gain an aeronautical radio operators certificate and undergo at least five hours of flying experience as well as learning important things like the navigation, how to read air charts, meteorology, and the internal functions of an RPAS. In this course, students will also find out how to execute effective drone surveys and map the surface of the earth through landscape models. Students who will complete the particular unit successfully will be prepared for a job to fly a wide range of aircraft weighing up to 7kg.