UK pilots: The CAA and my potential £2500 fine!!

Interesting thoughts, Meta4, thanks. I guess until such scenarios are tested in a court they will remain grey areas. Like I say, I'm not personally trying to exploit loopholes, but at the same time I don't want to fall foul of or be hamstrung by what appear to be confused/confusing aspects of the regulations.
 
My understanding is if you are not earning money (or any other valuable consideration) for flying and do not fly specifically to sell photos it's not aerial work. Whether you make a net profit isn't stated but if you don't I'm not sure how convincing the caa case would be.

If you capture images on a genuine hobby/recreational flight and then at a later date find you can use a photo or video from a flight i think that would be fine - obviously if you did it every week that would not.

Best thing would be too phone the caa and ask them explaining situation i am sure they will advise either way and then you will know.

My understanding is the caa are keen to promote responsible flying and are approachable and reasonable. So let us know how you get on.
 
Good advice. I will contact them. I agree also with your comment 'if you did it every week', which would not be my intention. Perhaps they're monitoring this board, in which case they now have my full name and can track my every move :)
 
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Good advice. I will contact them. I agree also with your comment 'if you did it every week', which would not be my intention. Perhaps they're monitoring this board, in which case they now have my full name and can track my every move :)
Hi Ian,

I would also be very interested in the CAA's reply1 I am planning to go for a PFAW in the next few months.
 
I emailed the CAA before I started flying and the data protection website about flying with a camera. The CAA were brilliant basically the rules boil down to if you want to fly a drone less than 7kg for non commercial use you don't need any permits even with a camera attached. The CAA guidelines are they would like to you stay below 400ft and within a range of 1500ft. This is simply to keep other airspace users safe. If you are flying they also state that you need to be 150m away from property and vessels and 50m away from people but this has nothing to do with privacy but to do with safety. Upon contacting the data protection people they have no issues what so ever about people flying with cameras and recording for non commercial use or posting on YouTube. If you are flying anything over 7kg OR for commercial gain you need CAA certification and you need to follow the guidance around the use of other peoples image. If you are flying FPV you need a spotter to make sure you are capable of taking avoiding action should something else enter the airspace.

These rules are for safety and make perfect sense and in no way limit me flying my Phantom in any way.


Do you have a copy of the email?
 
Interesting thread, have read through it all and can't help but think the CAA will find it difficult to find the resources to crunch down on 'commercial' flyers such as their threat to OP

As more and more drones are sold the CAA will encounter more and more cases of alleged commercial gain, surely it will quickly become unfeesible to 'fine' flyers even if they are doing it week in and week out selling photos or videos

What are the chances of CAA catching commercial unlicensed flyers? (A typical flight is 10-20 minutes) they won't catch them in the act at a quiet location so will they trace footage and online evidence? Surely not, they would need a massive team tracking down usernames and trying to cross reference them against license holders... Impossible!

I've only seen examples of people being fined for stupid flights (over football pitches or at nuclear submarine bases)

So here are my 2 points

1. Hobbyist turning commercial will surely be
Able to operate commercial for a while at least being sensible without being identified by the CAA (my thinking is this would allow the hobbyist to fly commercially while the 3 MONTH process of getting a license can slowly unfold if the individual feels the operation shows some sign of being long term financially viable then of course they should get the license and be official. But I don't see how the CAA can clamp down on this type of activity

2. I have seen thousands of drone videos on YouTube - most of these YouTubere (Ben brown, Louis Cole,casey neistat [visited London]) live off their YouTube ad revenue - when they use drone footage in a video they are directly extracting value from the drone flight footage ....

The CAA could spend decades cracking down on the UNlicensed contraventions on YouTube alone....

Would love to know what you guys think about the above !
 
Please be aware that the experiences written about in this post refer to the UK Civil Aviation Authority and may not be the same in your country. And sorry for the length of this post. But please read to the end.

A friend and I set up a name to post our aerial footage and photos under on Facebook.

We've recently found that the CAA (Civil Aviation Authrority) are not happy with our practises so thought I would share our experiences with you guys so the same thing doesn't occur for you. I'm interested to know if people were aware of the rules and regulations before purchasing, after or even not at all until reading this post...

With the ever growing popularity of Phantoms and similar devices the CAA are soon going to have a lot of issues on their hands. They've contacted us with a potentially very real £2,500.00 fine for the way we have been operating. I'm sharing this so that others are not faced with the same.

A small fact; the seller we got our original Phantoms from has sold a minimum of 800 since the start of the year. We now both fly DJI F550 Flame Wheels.



Now we stated to the CAA that we had not been charging for anything we had been doing no matter how commercial it appeared to be. However they said that we had been breaking other rules as laid out in CAP393 Articles 166 and 167. I only see rules broken in Article 167, but also feel these rules are out of date for modern equipment such as the Phantom with GPS.

CAP393 Article 166: Small unmanned aircraft


The next document is the one that to us seems more like a tax on the device instead of the requirement for a licence.

CAP393 Article 167: Small unmanned surveillance aircraft - Meaning, ONLY IF A CAMERA IS ATTACHED!!!


The CAA should really think about defining what a congested area is. They complained that we flew over a 300 acre derelict mental asylum that has been empty, closed and disused for over 16 years.

And also let me state again. 167 rules only apply when a camera is attached. So the whole thing about a licence being required is BS, it is most definitely a tax.

I would be interested to know if you ever got fined for this?
 

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