I’m asking on behalf of a fellow Drone operator who works in TV.
He was doing a commercial flight/filming. He aquired permission from the landowner to TOAL, but during the flight he moved onto council land to operate the drone and maintain VLOS. Has he broken the rules by not requesting council permission to be “operating” his drone - even though he has taken off and landed from private property and had permission from the landowner to do so?
Any and all input welcome.
: )
Just when you think you’ve heard every possible edge case there ever was…
Let your “friend” ( ) know it will depend entirely on the council in question and whether their policies allow “flying from” their land - as that’s what your friend was doing.
Thanks. I’ll let him know. Such a minefield out there.
Cheers!
As a commercial operator I’m surprised your friend isn’t aware of all these things already
Yeah. I agree with that. He should have known better - Just to be clear - I’m not the person in question. I’m genuinely asking on behalf of someone else.
A bit of background - I am a TV Producer/Director/Camera operator and have picked up Drone Filming/photography with the advent of these new smaller sub 250g drones (ie. DJI Mini 3 Pro etc) and the quality of images you can get from them. TBH - there is a new breed of TV/Social Media Content Creator and camera operator in Film & TV world who are starting to pick up drones (especially the smaller ones) and adding them to their repertoire. They get their licenses and then they start flying and filming as quick as they can - but they all have the instincts of a traditional camera operator who are used to navigating the risks and rules of filming on “terra firma” and they haven’t quite got the instincts of an aviator-camera operator - and thus haven’t quite wrapped their heads or developed good behaviours around the risks and rules of flying a drone and filming. Some are sadly total mavericks by choice and other are just accidentally being maverick and not fully thinking through the risks and rules. A lot of these camera operators are juggling a lot of different jobs, scripting, shooting on traditional hand held cameras , directing people/crews, and managing busy/stressful shoots + now they are flying drones. Some of them are quite junior still and are also quite impressionable when pressured by their bosses to just throw their drones up and get those amazing shots without fully realising they are very very liable should an accident happen. I for one am trying hard to juggle my normal duties as a Producer/Director and also add Drone Filming to my skills and am trying to do it all by the book and follow the rules but there are definitely loads of producers like me who are not …
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I’m hoping nothing changes here, but as Ian says they seem intent on taking away our sub-250 freedoms and so we need to send our responses to CAA.