A Study Of The Legal Issues Related To The Civilian Unmanned Aircraft

The application and development of unmanned aircraft(UA)in civil and commercial field has been widespread.The application field of civilian unmanned aircraft has been more and more extensive,and the application speed has been more and more frequent.The rapid development of the industry is accompanied by a series of legal issues.As an emerging thing,what is the legal attribute of civilian unmanned aircraft? How should it be effectively regulated and supervised to reduce or avoid its adverse effects on the traditional civil aviation industry and the safety of the third person's life and property? What is the legal status of civilian unmanned aircraft in the traditional civil aviation legal system? How should it be better integrated into the existing systems and practices of civil aviation law as a legal concept? All of these are issues that need to be studied and solved.Therefore,this article discusses different legal issues with regard to civilian unmanned aircraft separately with five chapters.The first chapter begins with the discussion of conception.Through the comparison of the conceptions of civilian unmanned aircraft in different legal documents,and the discussion of some conceptions closely related to it,we can clarify the intension and extension of civilian unmanned aircraft.From the prospect of its intension,civilian unmanned aircraft can be defined as an aircraft without pilot on board.From the prospect of its extension,it is important to distinguish civilian unmanned aircraft from model aircraft,remotely piloted aircraft and so on.What is closely related to a thing's conception is about its classification.The second chapter focuses on the analysis of the legal attribute of civilian unmanned aircraft,and it can be defined as the civil aircraft under the current air law system.This chapter further explains the legal status of civilian unmanned aircraft referring to the standard of current civil aircraft.Chapter three to Chapter five are separate discussions about some specific legal issues of civilian unmanned aircraft based on its concept and nature.The third chapter discusses the driver's qualification of civilian unmanned aircraft at the level of Chicago Convention and domestic administrative regulations.And the key issue of the legislation is as follows.As for the Chicago Convention,it is about how to integrate the driver's qualification of civilian unmanned aircraft into the existing driving management for manned aircraft;as for domestic legislation,it is about how to introduce an effective upper law to make up for the lack of effectiveness of the current normative documents.Chapter four focuses on the flight management of civilian unmanned aircraft,and it mainly discusses the registration management and the license management respectively.From the perspective of registration management,as a kind of civil aircraft,civilian unmanned aircraft should be implemented with the nationality registration in traditional civil aviation legal system.At the same time,we can refer to the car management model on the road,and introduce real name registration management for civilian unmanned aircraft to better define the rights,and clarify the responsibility.From the perspective of licensing management,with reference to existing legal norms,it is necessary to strengthen the management of the operation of civilian unmanned aircraft.Moreover,this article also makes a tentative idea about the cross-border flight licensing issues since civilian unmanned aircraft may engage in cross-border transportation in the future.Chapter five deals with the legal liability relating to civilian unmanned aircraft.On the one hand,there exists the liability issue to the third party on the ground(water)in the current practice.This article analyzes which provisions of our current legislation can be applied and whether these provisions need to be improved.The need for further refinement from the perspective of Rome Convention is also reflected in this article.On the other hand,this article envisages the issue of carrier liability that may arise from the application of civilian unmanned aircraft in air cargo and even passengers transportation in the future,and discusses whether the carrier liability issue involving civilian unmanned aircraft can be covered in the existing legal framework.