Drone insurance

Do you need drone insurance?

If your drone or model aircraft is 20kg or more, you must have third party drone insurance, no matter what you use your aircraft for.

Recreational drone insurance

If your drone is under 20kg and just for fun, you’re not legally obliged to have insurance. When it comes to recreational use, drone insurance is optional – although an unfortunate crash landing on someone’s home or car while you’re behind the controls means you’re responsible for any resulting damage or injury. It could be worth considering recreational drone insurance to protect yourself, just in case.

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What’s the best drone insurance for me?

Whether you’re using your drone for business or pleasure, you have a choice of two main policy types:

1. A traditional annual policy usually split into monthly payments. This is a popular choice for commercial pilots who use their drones on a regular basis.
2. A pay-as-you-fly (PAFL) policy. This protects your drone only while you’re using it and, therefore, often works out cheaper. It may include cover per flight or over a period of time, for example per hour, per day or per week. This is usually a good option for occasional flyers or if you’re planning a holiday somewhere scenic and fancy taking some great aerial photographs.

What does commercial drone insurance include?

If you use your drone for work, you may also want to check potential policies to see if they cover the following, depending on your needs:

• Aviation liability insurance – meets the CAA’s requirements that you’re covered against ‘acts of war, terrorism, hijacking, acts of sabotage, unlawful seizure of aircraft and civil commotion’. This is compulsory if you fly your drone commercially.
• Equipment cover – for both in-flight and out-of-flight equipment, payload and spares.
• Hired-in equipment cover – protects equipment not owned by you that you’ve hired in.
• Cyber cover against the drone being hacked.
• Replacement drone hire.
• Transit cover – while your drone is being moved.
• Night flying.
• Legal expenses.
• Employers’ liability – designed to protect employers against the cost of compensation claims, if an employee injures themselves or becomes ill as a result of working for them. If you have an existing employers’ liability policy, check how this would cover you for drone use.
• Professional indemnity insurance – allows you to recover losses from compensation claims made against you in certain circumstances. Again, if you have an existing policy, check if this would cover your needs.
• Business travel insurance may be needed for the operator, in addition to any transit cover for the drone, if not included in the drone policy.

Some specialist providers will also offer short-term policies while you undertake the necessary CAA training and flight assessment, then refund the amount or discount an annual policy by the cost of the temporary training policy.

When you’re choosing commercial drone insurance, it’s also worth thinking about:

• The number of drones you want to cover
• The flying hours you expect to do
• How many operators and pilots need to be included in the cover
• Where in the world you’ll be flying.

For both recreational and commercial drone users, read the small print to make sure you choose the right recreational drone insurance cover.

Are drones dangerous?

Your drone may be small, but it can have a big impact if it hits the windscreen of an aircraft or gets caught up in the blades of a helicopter mid-flight.

With this in mind, UK law restricts all drones from flying above 400 feet and within one kilometre of airport boundaries.

To help you fly safely, take the CAA-approved courses to develop your flying skills. And with safety in mind, consider using Drone Assist or an equivalent app. Drone Assist is a drone safety app from NATS, the UK’s main air traffic control experts. When you use it, you can see an interactive map of airspace used by commercial air traffic so you can check areas to avoid or those where you’ll need to use caution when flying your drone. The app also identifies ground hazards that may pose safety, security or privacy risks and gives you the chance to share your location with the wider drone community when you’re out flying.

What is the Drone code?

For practical advice on becoming a safer drone pilot, the Drone Code is your one-stop shop.

Here’s a summary of six of the key points:

1. Make sure you can always see your drone without needing binoculars or any other viewing equipment. This is known as keeping a visual line of sight.
2. Never fly it above 120 metres (400 feet).
3. Keep it at least 50m away from people, including people in buildings, cars or boats.
4. Never fly your drone over people, particularly crowds.
5. Keep at least 150 metres away from residential, recreational, commercial and industrial areas.
6. Avoid airports, airfields and aircraft.

If you want to fly outside the rules of the code, you’ll need special authorisation from the Civil Aviation Authority.