Choctaw Nation BEYOND Program awarded expanded FAA approval for BVLOS operations

The Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma (CNO) BEYOND Program announced it received approval from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for an expanded Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) operational waiver.  This expands the original waiver to an approximately 43-mile-long area covering CNO medical clinics, CNO’s Emerging Aviation Technology Center testing site, and various other facilities. It is one of the largest of its type currently in the United States.  The CNO waiver covers approximately 377 square miles within the CNO Reservation area.

This multi-faceted waiver includes a combination of true BVLOS without Visual Observers (VO’s) and BVLOS with VO’s.  The waiver utilizes ground-based Detect and Avoid (DAA) and will be using uAvionix SkyLine Managed C2 and DAA sensors. The CNO waiver is also the first of its kind to utilize the uAvionix C2 Skylink 5060 radio system for full connectivity in the expanded BVLOS area.

The newly approved waiver signifies that CNO and uAvionix have demonstrated to the FAA the aircraft DAA systems, procedures, and the control network meet the safety threshold for operations in the national airspace. Key components of the system deployed in the expanded waiver area include the uAvionix SkyLine C2 management platform and pingStation3 dual-mode ADS-B receivers. The SkyLine C2 management platform is integrated with the DeTect Harrier radar as part of the surveillance layer and used to control several CNO owned UAS / eVTOL aircraft through the uAvionix muLTElink and SkyLink series of C2 radios.