The government affects the activity with bureaucratic costs of more than $3,500 for companies who want to use drones.

While in the US there is an online registration process where companies and individuals pay only $5, in Costa Rica the Directorate General of Civil Aviation does not seem to be interested in encouraging the market. An investigation of Elfinancierocr.com reveals that $1,874 has to be paid to obtain certification and to commercially operate the drones, plus $94 per license, an insurance policy for liability and damage to third parties (which is around $1,800), and a course taken whose price varies depending on the school teaching it.

And although the inspector of aeronautical operations at Civil Aviation, Allen Víquez argued in El Financiero that the original amount was three times higher and that they did listen to the industry by when creating the tariffs, Jorge Umaña, president of the Association of Operators of Aircraft Piloted at a Distance in Costa Rica (Aoapa) told Elfinancierocr.com that “… the general feeling of the union is to follow it clandestinely with some exceptions, which is not good for general aviation safety issues.”

“… The response (from Civil Aviation) is evidence of a nonexistent interest, something which isn’t the case in the aeronautics regulatory authorities in the US, as the cost of regulation does not annihilate the very industry they are regulating ,” accused Otto Rivera, executive director of the Chamber of Information and Communication Technologies (Camtic)”.

Source: elfinancierocr.com