Permission for what ?
I understand the many valuable comments made but many of the members have had similar requests or just provided images to media sites with no payments received. I have been lucky to have some of my simple images and videos featured in magazines, newspapers and websites. Some have been credited but that is all. Yes the papers and magazines are then sold for profit but I don’t see this as being commercial work if the copyright holder is not paid??
From @kvetner’s post above it seems there isn’t anything specifically in law that requires insurance for a commercial flight, nor any real definition of what a commercial flight it. Therefore in my view anyone could argue that their flight was (to them) non-commercial if they can make a case to support that.
I guess that really that changes the question from ‘what is a commercial flight’ to ‘under what circumstances will my FPV-UK (substitute as needed) liability insurance remain valid’. Because that’s what we really care about. If the circumstances of the flight dictate that the insurance won’t pay out, then you’d likely need other insurance to protect yourself against claims.
Perhaps after all this is a question that @FPVUK could help with. When is their insurance valid and when isn’t it?
The FPV-UK handbook says this:
Pleasure Use Only: Except where the member has a ‘Flight Test Cover’ subscription, only
flying for pleasure purposes (IE purely for fun / pleasure / as a hobby) is covered. The
member’s membership certificate will show ‘Pleasure Only’ under the endorsements section,
and under the insurance section on their plastic membership card.
Commercial operations: Commercial operations (IE where a ‘valuable consideration’ is
received for the flight) are specifically and completely excluded from cover. Furthermore,
EC785/2004 insurance is required for flying activity which is not for ‘sport or recreation’. This
insurance does not include EC785/2004 cover.
If you flew for pleasure and afterwards decided to offer them out, or you were asked afterwards if one of your images could be used, your flight was recreational.
If you set out to take photos for a website, magazine, etc then it was commercial, whether you got any reward for it or not. You might not have been rewarded but the magazine is.
Many thanks for the view on this, feel sure others may have a different swerve on the subtle difference. Fortunately in the cases so far they were my own stock library taken before the fact.
Happy flying
To fly my drone and film the allotments from above 
You don’t need any permission for that ;o)
Unless its private land you are taking off from and he is the land owner.
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And publishers are always trying to tell me that a credit is incredibly valuable.
That doesn’t put shoes on the kids feet though.
Agreed. But if credit was of value, it would be commercial…
I had a similar question for a similar situation, and someone gave me some guidance that I found helpful.
If someone ‘could have been paid for the work’, then it’s best to class it as commercial.
I found paying the £5 was with it just for my peace of mind.
So the wife is commercial? Can I claim on expenses? Like MPs?
I agree with the first paragraph.
And disagree with the second paragraph.
If you have a paying client when you do the flight, it is commercial work - and requires EC785/2004 insurance. If you do not, then it’s not.
If someone else makes money out of the footage/photo somewhere else down the line, that’s immaterial.
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The land is owned by the allotment association. The Secretary is the elected head/ spokesperson of that association. Nuff said
So if there’s no gain for the pilot, not even a free pint and whether they knew the intended use of the images or not, it is recreational?
I have attached the definition of commercial operations. Taken from CAA document CAP1335 GA ANO review (https://publicapps.caa.co.uk/docs/33/CAP1335GAANOReview.pdf).
As you can see, it requires a paying client, who is separate to you and has no control over you.
In CAP658 the CAA actually defined that a pint would be considered nominal, but a case of beer would be considered Valuable Consideration.
Here you go:
From CAP658: https://www.aerosociety.com/media/8120/cap658-4-edition-amend-1-june-2013.pdf
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