Do you fly drones? You’ll have to buy a ‘flyer's licence’ from July.

Australia’s regulator of aviation safety, the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA), is set to establish a "flyer's licence" and mandatory registration for drones from July this year. As a result, this will affect the vast majority of drone flyers in the country, regardless of whether the drone is being used commercially or for pleasure.

The new rules will affect anyone with a drone weighing over 250g. This new ‘licence’ will require users to be accredited by CASA by passing an online education course and paying an annual fee. Depending on the type of drone and its use, CASA will charge the fee annually of between approximately $20 for recreational drones and up to $160 per commercial drone.

As well as this, a database of drone flyer data will be kept so as to be able to track users. According to CASA spokesman, Peter Gibson, "It will certainly give us big advantages in terms of complaints or reports of drones being flown improperly or against the safety rules".

CASA is currently working on the development of a real-time network that can track drones the same way it can track aircraft. All this comes in the wake of Google's parent company, Alphabet’s trialling the use of drones to deliver burritos, coffee, and medication in a suburb on the fringes of Canberra.