FAQ – Frequently Asked Questions

This is probably the question we get asked the most particularly referring to drone work in areas such as city centres and areas that might be hard to get access to. The reality is that as commercial drone operators we spend a lot of our time doing meticulous planning and ensuring that our drone flights are safe in whichever area we are operating so the answer is probably we can fly our drones commercially in most places giving the right amount of time planning and risk mitigation.

Again and in relation to the first frequently asked question where can we fly drones, the second most asked question is where can’t we fly drones and as before the answer to that question is only limited to specific areas that have real restrictions around them.

Most of them are fairly common sense such as airports which have distinct no-fly zones around the central area that covers the runways and the approaches to the airport, but also has a secondary zone that can easily be flown by any drone operator if they know the correct procedures to plan and mitigate safe flight in those areas.

There are of course other areas that are prohibited to fly a drone directly over such as sports stadiums including football club grounds and Athletics stadiums as an example.

It is prohibited to fly our drones over the top of any military installations naturally due to the security risk and the potential for illegal use of the photos.

We are also not allowed to fly directly over roads such as motorways dual carriageways and main city routes and finally it is prohibited for us to fly our drones directly over people and in particular crowds of people once again because of the risk of injury to the people in those crowds.

As a business we have a specific drone insurance policy which covers all of our equipment both the drones that are used for flights as well as the ground equipment.

This policy also includes our public liability insurance which provides cover for up to £5 million pounds of public liability insurance, this level of cover is important due to the types of projects we are often involved in for drone surveys and inspections and promotional video flights.

As a professional company we take a great amount of pride in properly planning each and every project we undertake.

To this end we always ask that a client first of all has a initial conversation about the details of the project naturally to include the location and what the final output is required by the client.

We will then work on a proposal to to satisfy the needs of the project and deliver the proposal to the client for review.

Once the client is happy that the proposal covers their requirements exactly we ask for an official purchase order from the client to secure the pilot resources, and book the date for the work to take place.

The biggest issue we face as commercial drone operators is always the factor of the weather and how adverse weather conditions can affect whether or not we fly the Drones.

For any of the projects the single biggest weather factor that can affect whether or not we are able to fly when we arrive on-site is is always wind but more specifically wind at height.

The wind on the ground is often the very different wind speed to the wind at height that drone is invariably going to be working at and with a maximum working height of 120 m above ground level there’s a very strong chance that the wind will be much greater at those altitudes and what therefore affects our ability to be able to fly to complete the project.

We use a range of commercially available weather forecasting tools which includes the normal forecast tools for wind,rain and any other adverse weather such as as the Met Office and other applications including Apps as Windy.com.

We also use very specific drone based forecasting tools such as UAV forecast which is very good for giving a specific indication of the weather relating to wind and rain at certain times of the day.

This allows for pre planning of projects to ensure that we can complete the work as booked without being affected by weather, that might cause delays or at worst the need to reschedule the work.

As mentioned in the previous frequently asked question relating to weather we do of course have a policy relating to to adverse weather conditions that may affect the work we undertake

Once a job is booked by a client for a specific date we closely monitor the weather conditions in the week approaching the actual day of the job using the tools previously mentioned such as UAV forecast, we are able to to accurately predict whether or not the weather conditions will be suitable to perform the work on the day as booked.

However weather being weather it’s prone to change and going to change very quickly indeed so once again we monitor this in the days coming up to the actual date of the booking.

If after Consulting the weather apps we feel that the weather is too adverse to be able to do the work on the day we will contact the client and suggest that we reschedule the work on site for another day when the weather is more suitable.

Sometimes a client has to ensure that at least we have tried to complete the work on the actual day that it was booked for initially, if this is the case and the client insists that we still arrive to complete the work on the originally booked date, but once we are on the site the weather conditions are too adverse and we have to cancel we will still charge the fees as agreed because we have arrived to site and naturally cannot do any other work that day.

If we postpone the work to another day and date prior to arriving on site there’s no charge for making such a change which we feel is the sensible way to approach bookings that may be affected by adverse weather conditions.