UAV in Aviation: Cost of Unsafe Events

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are recognized as a leading innovation with great potential to improve a lot of processes within different industries. However, to achieve their potential, solutions for UAVs’ safe integration into aviation are needed. Aviation is the most vulnerable industry since UAVs and aircraft share the same airspace and therefore potentially catastrophic consequences if collisions occur. This paper presents an analysis of the costs of unsafe events caused by UAV operations in aviation. The research highlights that the economic effects of unsafe events are multiple and have an effect on different stakeholders in the air transport system: airlines, airports, air navigation service providers, UAV operators, etc. In addition to assessing an approximate value of the airline cost of an unsafe event caused by the UAV operations for the designed scenario, the paper outlines the challenges in quantifying certain cost categories. Identifying and assessing aircraft accident costs is useful in the safety management system both for indicating the potential financial loss, and benefits that may arise by making investments in improving the safety level. It can be expected that research results can be incorporated into the safety risk assessment process (within consequences severity), in cost-benefit analysis of UAV integration in different industries, as well as for spreading awareness about the consequences of a potential UAV-manned aircraft unsafe events.