In recent years, civil drones have become more and more visible in everyday life. There are numerous reports in the media covering a variety of drone aspects and technical developments. In addition, everyone is used to bird's-eye views as common features in television, movies and photography. However, little is known about how the public perceives this development. This article reports the results of a representative national study on the acceptance of civilian drones. Overall, a balanced but slightly positive attitude towards civil drones was revealed. Factors analyzed include age, gender, place of residence or interest in technical matters, as well as the individual level of knowledge about the topic. Free verbal associations with the general term drone are described as well as concerns about the usage of civil drones. Concerning different applications of civil drones, results indicate clear approval in Germany for the use of drones in civil protection, rescue missions and research work. However, flights for advertising, leisure and parcel delivery purposes are disagreed with by at least half of those questioned. In the presentation of the results, this article describes social acceptance of civilian drones and thus helps to better understand the perception of civil unmanned aerial vehicles.

In about 15 years, there is likely to be urban air mobility (UAM) in larger cities across the globe. Air taxis will provide on-demand transportation for individual needs. They will also connect important transportation nodes, such as airports and city centers, as well as providing quick transfers between train stations or a convenient option for crossing rivers and lakes. It is hoped that UAM will help meet today’s political targets of sustainability and decarbonization. However, there are certain threats that could impede the sustainable and thus successful introduction of UAM to our cities, with noise being a prominent limitation. This paper argues that citizens have to be viewed as stakeholders in urban air transportation, regardless of whether they or not intend to use it, and that a concept of resident participatory noise sensing (PNS) will be beneficial to the implementation of UAM. Web-based services and smartphones facilitate the access and updating of current information about local noise distributions, thus enabling them to be used to foster UAM in smart cities.

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In the future in aviation, operators will have to work with highly automated systems. This increased level of automation will necessitate operators monitoring appropriately (OMA). To prepare future training and selection processes, a normative model was developed providing criteria for the identification of OMA. According to this model, the monitoring process comprises distinct monitoring phases in which attention should be focused on relevant areas. The present study tests the normative model with experienced human operators in aviation on the basis of their eye movements. Results from 21 participants (air traffic controllers and pilots) support this normative model of OMA. In this regard, the normative model provides a promising basis for personnel selection and training in future ATM scenarios.

Looking ahead, in about 20 years, there is likely to be urban air mobility in larger cities across the globe. If economic predictions come true, thousands of air taxi flights will take place daily in capital cities-not only in megacities. Noise generated by urban flight mobility has been identified as a critical factor in this development. A concept is proposed to help raise the tolerance level for urban air noise among communities as well as of individual residents by means of transparency. This concept views residents as stakeholders in urban air mobility and widens the call for continuous noise measurements of vertical takeoff and landing operations on individual site basis [1] by residents voluntary on-site data collection enabled by smartphone-based participatory noise sensing (PNS). In the presentation of this concept, this discussion paper describes important aspects of social acceptance of urban air mobility.