What you should know about the use of drones at CATIE

• CATIE received authorization for non-commercial operation of remotely piloted aircraft systems.

July 13, 2022.  The Director General of Civil Aviation of Costa Rica (DGAC, its Spanish acronym) has granted CATIE (Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center) the authorization for non-commercial operation of remotely piloted aircraft systems (RPAS), better known as drones, so the Center must now have the necessary control method, instruction and maintenance program according to the nature and extent of the operating specifications.

Non-commercial operations include activities intended exclusively for private purposes that do not lead to public or mass dissemination of the information obtained through the use of RPAS, such as search and rescue flights in areas, natural disaster assessment flights, production and maintenance test flights, demonstration flights not open to the public and aimed at closed groups of attendees, flights for national and international research programs, research and development flights, among others endorsed by the DGAC.

For this purpose, in order to meet the requirements for safe and appropriate authorized operations, those wishing to perform any type of flight within the CATIE campus must first contact our direct liaison with the DGAC: Allan Guerrero, research assistant of the CATIE Climate Action Unit, at allan.guerrero@catie.ac.cr allan.guerrero@catie.ac.cr

We thank you for your attention to this information, as well as for your collaboration in order to operate in the best way the use of RPAS.