It is with great relief that the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) is relaxing the laws on drones that are under 2kg from September 2016.  CASA have changed the laws in regards to using a drone for commercial purposes.  There used to be a lot of red tape to make money from this growing industry.  A pilots certificate and an operators certificate used to be required to make commercial gain from drones under 2 kg.  Sometimes people had to wait up to 6 months for their licences to be approved from CASA due to the backlog of applications.  It was also quite an expensive and confusing process to obtain these licences.  Private CASA approved instructors charge up to $4000 for the licences to legally operate a drone.  Now the new laws will skip these procedures and give drone operators exemption from having to obtain licences for commercial gain.  But only if the drone is under 2kg.  Otherwise the old procedure still applies.

The new laws still require the operator to follow the CASA rules when operating a drone.

• stay away at least 30m from people when operating a drone.
• keep your drone under 120 metres
• not night flying
• you must keep your drone in line of site.
• you must not operate your drone within 5.5km of any airport.

Approval by CASA is required if any of the above rules are going to be breached.  Overall this is a great new law that can also enhance the use of drones in films as well.