More taking lessons in drone flying as interest grows

More people here are signing up for classes to learn how to fly drones safely, amid growing interest in unmanned aircraft for both recreational and commercial purposes.

Drone enthusiasts can sign up for beginner courses to learn the fundamentals of flying a drone, or for more advanced ones to obtain the Unmanned Aircraft Pilot Licence (UAPL), which is needed to fly drones commercially.

Educational institutions and private academies that offer such courses said their students are mostly males aged seven to 70.

Drone Flying Academy founder Richie Lim said about 60 people sign up for his courses every month, triple the number in 2019. About 80 per cent are recreational users, and the rest are commercial users seeking the UAPL.

"More people are into aerial videography as it provides a bird's eye view of places. People are also showing these high-view perspectives of buildings like MBS (Marina Bay Sands) on their social media pages, motivating others to learn drone flying," said Mr Lim, who started his academy in March 2019.

Recreational user Edmond Seet, 54, attended a Drone Flying Academy basic course in October last year, two or three years after buying a drone he had problems controlling. "After the course, I found it much easier to control my drone and even got to play with some more advanced drones at the academy," said the sales director.

Mr Foo Wing Yong, deputy director of engineering services in the School of Engineering at the Institute of Technical Education (ITE) College Central, who oversees drone courses, said there has been an increase in registrations for its courses since 2021.

ITE currently offers nine courses with a range of difficulty levels. Two or three classes for each course are held every quarter, with the number of students ranging from three to 16. The courses are always fully subscribed, said ITE. This is compared with only one or two classes in each course per quarter in early last year.

Freelance cartoonist Ang Ting Fang, 33, took three courses at ITE between last December and this June, which taught her the basics of controlling drones as well as the laws and regulations of using such devices. "I wanted to get a licence to do commercial work... If companies want to hire pilots to survey rooftops, I will be able to take on those jobs," she said.

A Ngee Ann Polytechnic spokesman said it has increased the number of runs of its four-day Drone Ops for Construction Supervision and Monitoring/Building Inspection (Basic) course for adults, from just one when it was introduced in 2019 to seven last year.

When Transport Minister S. Iswaran launched Singapore's first and only designated flying area at Pandan Reservoir on July 17, he said there has been a very strong uptick in the activity levels of the unmanned aircraft community here, with a significant rise in recreational use.

Mr Tan Kah Han, chief technology officer at the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore and senior director of its Unmanned Systems Group, said there were 16,095 unmanned aircraft registrations as at June 30 this year, compared with 4,158 on April 1, 2020.

Examples of unmanned aircraft include drones, radio-controlled aircraft and remote-controlled kites. Unmanned aircraft associations and interest groups have also seen a spike in new members in recent times.

Those in the industry expect the growth of drone users to remain healthy as Covid-19-related restrictions on movement and travel are gradually eased globally.

Drone Flying Academy's Mr Lim said: "The different and endless applications of drones, like air taxis and drone light shows, could have enticed people to start learning how to fly them. It is possibly the next era of technology."