European drone operators and manufacturers are navigating a testing landscape that is fragmented, expensive, and increasingly out of step with where the industry needs to go. Civil aviation authorities each interpret the same EASA framework differently, so a test campaign that satisfies one national authority may be invalid in the next country over. Plus, the science of reliably testing drones in various environments is still being built from the ground up.
In a recent webinar hosted by Commercial UAV News entitled Beyond Borders: A Pan-European Approach to Drone Testing and Airworthiness Compliance, two of Europe's leading drone test center experts sat down to talk honestly about the current state of airworthiness compliance and what it will take to fix it. The conversation featured Tiziano Fiorucci, head of testing and reliability at WindShape, and Jordy Salvador, CEO of BCN Drone Centre, and was moderated by Erin Williams, content specialist at CUAV News. The webinar can still be viewed with free registration, which includes access to all slides from the discussion as well.
Fiorucci opened with a presentation on what controlled indoor testing actually looks like today, and why it matters so much. The drone industry has historically relied on outdoor field testing or repurposed wind tunnel technology designed for fixed-wing aircraft, neither of which is well-suited to the dynamics of modern commercial UAS. WindShape's approach centers on a modular array of individually controllable fans capable of reproducing specific wind profiles—including turbulence signatures from urban canyons and maritime environments—with the kind of repeatability that outdoor testing simply cannot offer.
The system integrates GPS spoofing, RTK positioning, and millimeter-precision motion tracking to give operators a complete picture of how a drone performs under controlled stress conditions. Fiorucci walked through examples of drones maintaining a half-meter hold box in steady wind, then failing to do so once gusting began, exactly the kind of insight that is invisible in a field test. The lab can also recreate rain, icing, and extreme temperature conditions, including ice accretion on propellers, to surface failure modes before they occur in the real world.
During the session, Fiorucci detailed his typical client base, noting that roughly 60 percent of operators come to a test center after something has already gone wrong, while 40 percent are arriving proactively. The latter, he says, is growing. Companies are starting to engage test centers at the design stage, working through failure mode and effects analysis before a platform is even finalized.
Salvador echoed that evolution. BCN Drone Centre, which has been operating since 2014, has moved well beyond selling access to a facility. The model is now testing as a service, including providing aircraft, pilots, and flight engineers for companies like satellite communications firms that need real-world drone validation but don't have drone operators on staff.
When asked what catches operators off guard most often, Fiorucci's answer called out water ingress after payload modification, icing, and battery performance degradation in extreme temperatures. Most commercial operators aren't building drones from scratch, but rather modifying existing platforms for their specific missions. Those modifications frequently create vulnerabilities that the original airframe was never tested against. The same payload that looks clean in a lab can create new aerodynamic and ingress problems at altitude.
Meanwhile, the regulatory discussion was the heart of the webinar, and both speakers were candid about how far the industry still has to go. Fiorucci used the EuroNCAP crash test standard as his benchmark. If a car passes a crash test in Sweden, that test is accepted in Italy. Drone operators don't have a similar system. Today, a test campaign completed in one EU member state may need to be repeated for a different national authority, even for the same platform operating under the same EASA framework.
What's missing, Fiorucci argued, are quantitative, agreed-upon performance benchmarks around which test centers can build harmonized test protocols. Salvador pointed to the fact that many drone manufacturers are still young startups that designed their platforms around performance targets without ever fully engaging with regulatory requirements. They arrive at test centers with impressive technology that isn't deployable under current rules.
Both speakers expressed cautious optimism. EASA's open/specific/certified category structure at least provides a clear framework to build on, and versions of it are now being adopted in the Middle East and Latin America. The European UAS Test Site Alliance is working toward more flexible testing procedures that would allow controlled destructive testing without triggering accident reporting requirements. Progress is happening, even if consensus isn't there yet.
Neither WindShape nor BCN Drone Centre can do this alone, and both speakers were explicit about it. The path forward is a distributed network of specialized facilities — indoor environmental labs, outdoor BVLOS ranges, EMC labs, regulatory consultants — that share a common testing language and whose results are mutually recognized. No single center has every capability. The value of the network is that a client can move seamlessly from indoor sub-component testing to outdoor BVLOS validation without losing continuity in the data.
The webinar closed with practical advice for operators who want to get ahead of a tightening certification environment. Fiorucci's recommendation was to start collecting data from day one, before anything else. Salvador, meanwhile, emphasized using an incremental approach. Don't try to skip steps to reach a maturity level your technology hasn't earned yet. The evidence base you build early is the same one that will carry you through certification later.
This just scratches the surface of the points hit on during the discussion. Register below to access the on-demand recording as well as the presentation slides.
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