A flight reviewer recently told me that the majority of BVLOS candidates he evaluates can accurately describe a lost link procedure. They recite the steps correctly. Then he asks them to execute it — simulated pressure, VO calling in traffic, clock running — and most of them fail. This is not a knowledge problem. Ground…
Canada’s formalized BVLOS framework — updated under Transport Canada’s November 4, 2025 regulatory changes — arrived after some Canadian operators had already spent years conducting equivalent missions abroad. What those operators brought home was not a competitive credential. It was something the updated CARs Part IX language cannot supply: the specific, non-transferable knowledge of what…
Toronto police have intercepted at least twenty unauthorized drones since the FIFA World Cup arrived in the city — tracking signal sources to a hotel doorstep blocks from the stadium, charging operators within sight of the Fan Festival gates. The legal authority behind those interceptions did not come from a drone security bill. It came…
Transport Canada has approved 78 providers to deliver BVLOS Advanced Operations ground school across Canada. Every one of them produces pilots holding the same credential. None of them are bound to a standardized curriculum. For commercial operators pursuing RPOC authorization or staffing BVLOS programs, that is not a bureaucratic footnote — it is the central…
They had logbooks. They had client contracts. They had three years of missions without a recordable incident. What they did not have was a pre-flight checklist anyone could locate, agree on, or execute consistently. When I asked the team lead to walk me through site assessment, he described what he personally looked for — and…
Transport Canada’s November 4, 2025 regulatory amendments quietly formalized Extended Visual Line of Sight — EVLOS — as a distinct operational category in Canadian drone law. It should have reshaped how the training industry positions the path to BVLOS. Instead, most providers kept selling the same ground school packages, and EVLOS landed without fanfare, without…
Transport Canada’s RPOC framework requires operators to define every crewmember’s responsibilities before a BVLOS flight is approved. Most operators read that requirement and think about their remote pilot in command. Almost none of them think hard enough about the Visual Observer. That gap — between regulatory intent and operational reality — is where Canadian BVLOS…
For years, the Special Flight Operations Certificate was the backbone of Canadian BVLOS operations — and its quiet failure. Every approval meant Transport Canada was underwriting your risk assessment. When that process ended with Transport Canada’s November 4, 2025 regulatory amendments formalizing the RPOC framework as the primary pathway for commercial BVLOS, something fundamental shifted:…
The drone arrived in a Pelican case with foam cutouts shaped like the future. The budget was approved, the hardware was procured, and someone in the organization checked the drone box. Eighteen months later, that case had never been opened for an operational BVLOS mission. The money was gone. The capability was not delivered. This…
A pipeline company hands you a certificate and calls their pilot qualified. The certificate is real — Transport Canada’s Advanced Operations exam, earned legitimately. The mission is also real: a multi-segment BVLOS corridor inspection over active NPS pipe, two navigable river crossings, and airspace that clips a controlled zone outside a northern Ontario municipality. The…
