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Dronelife…do I really need a licence?

You might have seen a few behind the scenes snaps over the summer on my Instagram of us having fun in the air with the drone.

Jaguar F-Type video filming BTS with Charlie, Justin & Paul

Flying for fun is one thing, but commercial drone flying (valuable consideration) needs to be licensed. So, what the hell does valuable consideration mean? Well after doing a bit of internet trolling, I found this excerpt…

Valuable consideration

1.2 Aerial Work means any purpose (other than commercial air transport) for which an aircraft (Includes Small Unmanned Aircraft) is flown if valuable consideration is given or promised in respect of the flight or the purpose of the flight.

1.3 The legislation itself uses the term “valuable consideration” instead of “payment”. This term has a very wide meaning, and includes the provision of goods and services.

1.3.1 Operators/Pilots should carefully consider the “purpose of the flight”. If the flight is being conducted as part of any business/commercial undertaking then it will most likely be deemed to be aerial work.

1.3.2 Some examples of what may be considered Aerial Work:

1 A neighbour giving you £40/Crate of Beer for some aerial photos of their house.
2 Estate agent taking aerial photos of a client’s property.
3 Building/site surveyor/inspector etc…. aerial survey work
4 Any training flight conducted as a requirement of maintaining currency in accordance with an aerial work permit.
5 Taking photographs and selling them to the media, putting online for sale etc….

1.3.3 The above list is by no means exhaustive and if an operator is in any doubt regarding the nature of a flight they should contact the Director of Civil Aviation for advice.

1.3.4 It should be noted that the ‘valuable consideration’ element may not be restricted solely to the operator/pilot.
For example: If the purpose of the flight was to obtain photographs/video which were then ‘gifted’ to a charity or such like who in turn received ‘valuable consideration’ this would most likely still come under the definition of ‘Aerial Work’. (excerpt taken from Jersey Airport SUA guidelines )

If you are still awake after reading all that, it appeared that I could only use drone footage for my own bedroom wall! A quick google search found the Resource Group, booked in & off we went to get qualified – Wales here we come…

The course was structured like this –

Resource Group Training Timetable

Flight simulation

Resource Group Flight Training

Yay, course passed, Ops Manual completed…and a big thanks for all the help & advice along the way to Steve Field, Charlie Baigent, Ben Kenobi, Justin Edgington, Dave Tassell, Mark Edwards, Phil Tarry and of course Paul & the Resource Group team.

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