Drone operator certification in the EU

[Irish Rover]

I have a DJI Mini Pro 4 and because it's less than 250g I don't need a licence or registration in Türkiye. I'm planning a trip to Greece in a couple of weeks, and on checking, I find it need to register as an operator because the drone has a camera. I can register anywhere in the EU so I opted for Ireland. What a palaver! It has to be done on the Irish Aviation Authority website. I didn't mind the proving my identity but then it all gets a bit OTT. To access the website subsequently you need to have a two factor authentication app like Microsoft Authenticator to use the secret self destructing secret codes they give you. They don't require you to do the online training or test, but they do charge you €41 to get an operators ID.

 

[Irish Rover]

It gets better. A lot of the online training video is almost unusable on the phone because it doesn't fit to screen. There's a silly multiple choice test and if you get an answer wrong they send you back as often as necessary to pick the "right"*** one. Then they ask you for another €51 for a certificate to say you did the online training.

*** One question asked in which country of the EU should you register. Their answer the country where you have a residence, but it's not correct as you don't actually need to be a resident at all.

 

[mjcp]

Technically…. It is supposed to be the 1st eu country you plan to fly in…


But have a look at Austria and France.

No cost ;-)



Edit. Looks like they now charge for registration…

dronespace.at die Austro Control Drohnenplattform - General Information

 

[Irish Rover]

Technically…. It is supposed to be the 1st eu country you plan to fly in…


But have a look at Austria and France.

No cost ;-)

Do u have a link please to where it says that

 

[mjcp]

Do u have a link please to where it says that

Yeah, looks like they have started charging. 40 odd eur.


I fly drones and rc gliders, the latter 4-6kg in weight, so well over lower weight thresholds!

To fly in France as a 3rd national (UK) I needed both an eu UAS cert and for France, I had to register each model… (and technically needed a transponder, but didn’t do that bit!)

At the time (2022?) it was free via AT and model reg via alpha tango was free too.

(Yes, my drone looks like the post office parcel desk, covered in sticky labels with odd looking tracking numbers for 3 different authorities! UK, AT and FR, plus all the CE class Stuff)