Tired of a bad rap (and I’m not talking run DMC)

It’s a great time to be in the UAS industry. New rigs and accessories are being revealed weekly. If you are reading this article, there’s a good chance you are serious about how you operate whether you are a commercially licensed pilot or a photographer transplant that had to add a UAS to stay ahead of your competition. In either case, to further this industry we must utilize SOP’s (standard operating procedures) and FOM’s (flight operations manuals). Let me explain why.

After 15 years as an ATP licensed pilot and flying airplanes for 26 years, I have checklists and standard operating procedures deeply engrained in my cerebellum. I have applied these to other areas of my life due to their efficiency. For now, lets just look at transportation. Imagine your morning commute, you find the interstate filled with big rigs without brakes doing 180MPH. Sound scary? Well, think about some of the drivers having learner permits, and some who have more experience, all mixed together out there. Wouldn’t you like a little more organization out there? Someone controlling a bit of that? That’s just what our Air Traffic Control system does.

ATC handles around 28,537 commercial flights per day. How do they manage to all operate safely? An airline pilot sometimes meets his copilot minutes before they take a metal tube 36,000 ft in the air at 593.741miles an hour. Standard Operating Procedures is a giant part of those 28,537 successful flights. Because of the SOP’s, both pilots could literally not talk (except for reading the checklist) the entire flight and know what and when the other pilot was going to do the ENTIRE flight.

As I said in the beginning, if you are reading this, you are trying to operate professionally. In order for the general public, clients, and government entities to have confidence in professional UAS operators, we should have these things in place. Not only do they exponentially increase safety, and make things more efficient, but they also show professionalism. Do you currently have a procedure for camera man loss of monitor, bird strike, erratic control issues, securing launch points? Do you operate the same way every time? Do you and your cameraman use headsets? Does your VO know anything about UAS operation? Does your video editor know the order of sent videos? Having SOP’s in place creates efficiency and adds safety to your operations. After all, time is money and we all know what a lack of safety can do to the wallet. Not only that, but this industry certainly does not need anymore help with bad press!

When we, a group of professional commercial pilots, decided to create this company it was natural for us to build the company with the same parameters as the aviation environment we were all familiar with. For example: NO equipment is taken out until a walk around is completed. We mark our launch area with a launch pad and secure our entire flight area so that everyone around is familiar and comfortable with our operation. Our job spec sheet is completed and put on our launch pad before flight so that it gets recorded as we check our controls. So just like any professional aviation operation, anyone of our operators can fly or camera any one of our rigs.

The technology available to us makes creating a safe operation even easier. With all of the software on our smart phones, aircraft specific checklists are easy to create and distribute. Most manufacturers have proposed items and we added important things we felt had been omitted. On the back of our ID’s is a non craft specific checklist, which includes things outside of the UAS. Point being, SOP’s and FOM’s may sound like a bunch of yaya and extra work but really it requires just a little planning and effort to garner a lot of return.

I am not writing this to boast about our operation, but to further this industry. Lets be real, some of our lower margin customers don’t care if we wear a “film crew” labeled vest and operate with SOP’s, but eventually our haphazard non 333 exempt competition may be asked to produce some of this. Why not go ahead and set a new standard? One that sets the real professionals apart. This will not only set you up for success but launch this new drone industry into a good future.