Applications and demand for airborne drone operations, including urban air mobility, are growing rapidly in regional and metropolitan areas. However, the expected traffic volumes in cities will make it impossible to operate drones in uncontrolled airspace. Despite the wealth of literature on pricing transport infrastructure usage showing that variable pricing is the optimal way for charging for road use, jurisdictions are reluctant to move towards this efficient mechanism evident in the slow uptake of road pricing implementation globally. What is worse, regulations have been drafted to tax the drone growth similarly to cars proposing the adoption of annual registration fees for drones. This paper proposes that drone use should instead adopt a pricing structure modelled on road user charging, and presents evidence suggesting that a case can be made for enabling controlled and fair growth through low altitude airspace management (LAAM) systems and variable drone user charges. A stated preference experiment with 825 respondents who actively fly drones has shown user charge potential in way of willingness to pay (WTP) of A$0.11 for flying a drone for one hour. Random parameters logit models further allowed us to establish much higher WTP for various currently not permitted activities such as A$7.09 to fly beyond line of flight or A$4.29 to fly outside daylight hours. As such, if those occasional uses are variably charged, we argue that a commercially viable LAAM system could be implemented, and low altitude air traffic user charging could overtake implementation of the wider (i.e. road) transport capacity pricing on the fast lane.

空中无人机操作的应用和需求，包括城市空中交通，在区域和大都市区迅速增长。然而，城市的预期交通量将使无人机无法在不受控制的空域中操作。尽管关于交通基础设施使用定价的大量文献表明可变定价是道路使用收费的最佳方式，但司法管辖区不愿意转向这种有效机制，这在全球道路定价实施缓慢实施中显而易见。更糟糕的是，已经起草了法规来对无人机的增长征税，就像汽车提议对无人机收取年度注册费一样。本文建议无人机使用应采用以道路使用者收费为模型的定价结构，并提供证据表明，可以通过低空空域管理 (LAAM) 系统和可变无人机用户收费来实现受控和公平增长。一项针对 825 名积极驾驶无人机的受访者进行的陈述偏好实验表明，用户对驾驶无人机一小时的支付意愿 (WTP) 为 0.11 澳元。随机参数 logit 模型进一步使我们能够为各种当前不允许的活动建立更高的 WTP，例如 7.09 澳元的飞行路线或 4.29 澳元的白天以外飞行。因此，如果这些偶尔使用的收费是可变的，我们认为可以实施商业上可行的 LAAM 系统，低空空中交通用户收费可能会超过在快速通道上实施更广泛的（即道路）运输容量定价。