Pan Pan: Why Remote Drone Operations Need Air Traffic Control

Pan Pan is the radio call a pilot makes when something is wrong but it isn't an emergency yet. It means "I have a problem and I want to deal with it before it becomes a Mayday."

In winter 2026, the ATSB opened six investigations into incidents at Sydney Airport in about a month. Each time, a person caught the problem before it got worse. The system held because of its people, not because it had margin to spare.

Mine sites are heading into the same territory. Drone flights over Australian mines are climbing fast, and more of them are flown beyond visual line of sight from a remote operations centre in another state. A mine's airspace is also busier than most people think. If flight numbers go up and nothing else changes, the odds catch up with you.

In this session, Sean Greenberg, a pilot himself, looks at what aviation has learned the hard way. He'll show how Sphere applies those lessons to remote drone operations over mine sites, drawing on more than 8,000 hub flights.

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