Drone regulations: Home vs Away

Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) recently released drone regulations in May. We understand that it’s not everything that works for the western world that should/would work for us here in Nigeria. But today we’ll be making a side by side comparison of NCAA (Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority) and FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) rules for commercial drones (small unmanned aircraft).

NCAA’s release statement on safety guideline for drone operators can be found here. Unlike the FAA rules, the NCAA rules are lengthy and a bit difficult to understand. A post by Ndubisi Arinze, a commercial drone pilot, helps summarize the rules. He helped break down the rules here.

Let’s do a quick side by side comparison of the FAA and NCAA rules

Side by side comparison table

FAA(USA)	NCAA(NIGERIA)
Operational rules are stated e.g the maximum weight of craft, don’t lose line of sight of craft and so on (as seen in link below)	Operational rules are that you have a certificate and you get appropriate authorization before doing anything.
Remote pilot certification: Applicant must be atleast 16, pass a test, complete a small online training course and be vetted by transport security administration	Remote pilot certification: It seems NCAA hasn’t come up with certification requirements for drone pilots
Drone airworthiness Certification: FAA airworthiness certification is not required. However, the remote pilot in command must conduct a preflight check of the small UAS to ensure that it is in a condition for safe operation.	Drone airworthiness Certification:Any registered owner of Nigerian registered aircraft, or agent of the owner, may apply for an airworthiness certificate for that aircraft. Each applicant for an airworthiness certificate shall apply in a form and manner acceptable to the Authority.
License fee: No airworthiness certification required	License fee: On Ndubisi’s post, we see that a fee of 500,000NGN is required and one’s business should be incorporated with Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) with a minimum capital shares of N20,000,000 By the way, most commercial drones cost less than NGN500,000 which is less than the price of a new car.

The FAA rules can be found here.

If the regulation fee is not reviewed, this would be killing the commercial drone business in Nigeria, setting us back many years. We hope changes would be made soon and information would be accessible with ease, on their website