James Coyne
James (Jim) Coyne holds a Bachelor of Engineering with Honours in Electronics and Communications from the Queensland University of Technology and a Master of Science in Aero-systems Engineering from Loughborough University of Technology, in the UK.
Jim spent over 21 years with the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) commencing as an aircraft certification engineer and held several supervisory and management roles during his tenure. His final position was as the Manager of the Future Technologies and Regulatory Trends Branch, which he commenced in mid-2009. Jim was on the team that developed the world’s first RPAS regulations in 2002, (CASR Part 101) and subsequently, as a senior manager led the team that developed Australia’s updated RPAS legislation.
Jim has been working in the unmanned aircraft systems world since 2005 and has a depth of experience in this field. He was the Australian representative and the former Co-chair of the International Civil Aviation Organization Unmanned Aircraft Systems Study Group (UASSG) and held that position from February 2010 until July 2014, where he helped steer the development of the ICAO RPAS Manual, Doc 10019, to which PASO seeks compliance. In 2015, he was contracted by ICAO to develop an RPAS Workshop, which is being used to train States how to develop their own regulations. Jim is a qualified ICAO trainer and ran a RPAS workshop for the Indonesian DGAC in 2016.
As a result of his international work, Jim was named as one of the top 50 most influential individuals in Asia’s UAS industry.
Jim is the co-author of the book titled, “Drones in Society-Exploring the Strange New World of Unmanned Aircraft”.
Jim was recently sponsored by The Global Fund as RPAS technical advisers to work with the Civil Aviation Authority of Vanuatu (CAAV) to develop locally applied RPAS regulations, policies, procedures and supporting documentation, while training the CAAV staff in regulatory oversight of RPAS. He wasalso oversighting the regulatory aspects of the UNICEF sponsored vaccines delivery trials on behalf of the CAAV to ensure compliance with world’s best practice. CAAVs RPAS regulations were gazetted late 2020.
