When last keeping up with European law it became evident the E.U., which would include the U.K. unless Brexit actually came to pass, was adopting across the board regs that required flight controllers to employ NFZ technology. European airspace is much more controlled and restrictive than U.S. airspace so from a bureaucrat perspective it would make sense to extend their control to hobby level flight. As one company has been expending considerable resources to lobby governments to adopt their technology it appears they won a major financial victory over there. Much money will be made from companies having to pay for licensing their code.
OTOH, Europe is very much a “fee for service” area where flying is concerned, requiring pilots to pay fees for multiple levels of flight and ground services every time they fly, whether they make use of those services or not. As drones would be an excellent source of tax (fee) revenue, requiring NFZ’s and an “oversight” authority to service them would set the stage for including drones in a fee for service extortion program structure. Those programs have made flying personal aircraft over there very expensive and reduced general aviation flying by a considerable level.
Plans to do similar here through an ATC privatization law were shot down in the last FAA reauthorization bill. The plan would have effectively given control of our airspace to commercial carriers and associated entities, requiring pilots to pay over and above their fuel tax fees, which are mandated by law to offset FAA service costs, every time they wanted to use a towered airport, check weather, receive ATC services, file flight plans, make use of airport security services, buy fuel, or any other service needed to fly their aircraft. The plan would essentially have given control of our airspace to those that have caused most of the airport congestion problems, the commercial air carriers. The same drone outfit that has been pushing for NFZ incorporation in Europe has been lobbying heavily for the same thing here, thus far without success. They even saw one of their minions become qualified (prematurely) to provide LAANC services for drone operators in hopes of collecting access service fees. The defeat of ATC privatization removed 50% of that potential revenue stream.
Because of upcoming changes to E.U. drone laws it’s easy to understand why Yuneec would employ NFZ tech there but to incorporate it in all their systems, especially those the list on their website as “professional” systems, which includes the H Plus, H-520 and 920 Plus, doesn’t make sense. As unit sales volume is greater in the U.S. than anywhere else in the world outside of China we might think Yuneec would make systems that permitted owners to operate freely within the legal confines of national geographies. We should also remember that Yuneec has publicly stated they do not restrict their commercial systems, a statement that has become a bit troubling with the presence of H Plus NFZ restrictions in Europe and no means to remove them.