COVID -19: NMB calls upon Drone pilots for help

[Roger]

NMB calls upon Drone pilots for help

[WarrenGardiner]

If this is legitimate, I sure hope they have the right systems in place to manage things. I know that the General Aviation guys have started a similar kind of initiative to assist with simple cargo and surveillance duties.

The international standard is generally for such assistance to come in the form of qualified pilots(ie. droneresponders.org etc). In this case any unqualified pilots would have to be chaperoned, educated and managed by the relevant authorites.

The Disaster Management Act as it is implemented makes allowances for volunteers(chapter 7 I think), so I suppose this might be ligitimate, nonetheless, I think the CAA would definitely have to sign off on it. The act also makes provision for training to be provided if necessary.

All in all I think it is an excellent initiative from NMB municipality and if handled correctly could be of great help to the community.

[Rotor kop]

How is this going to help any??? Pretty sure someone has nothing to do or needs to make some money..

[WarrenGardiner]

Well, thats the interesting part, if they are asking for volunteers, it doesn't mean people are necessarily going to get paid. In the disaster management act there is a part that says something along the lines of remuneration for costs incurred, but if I recall, nothing about payment...

As far as where it will help, they would probably be put to use for light surveillance, especially in informal settlements to enforce lockdown and direct groundforces, as well as security details. Manned aircraft could probably do the same, but in certain cases a drone is just a better solution.

Another thing to bear in mind is it was published on 1 April and might be a really bad April fools joke?