Quality over quantity. National services don’t focus on the quality of their pilots – they are primarily concerned with the quantity of pilots. That’s not to say that they don’t care about producing quality products, but they do this through a high volume of pilots. They offer jobs to all pilots, and assign the jobs on either a lowest bid or first come first served basis. Often times, these jobs go to the most inexperienced pilots. If a pilot goes out and does a poor job, they reject payment and assign the job to another pilot. The customer experiences this as delays and multiple visits to your site. These websites typically do not have minimum experience requirements. They also don’t require the pilot to carry insurance. This is a risky proposition for your property. The national services assign jobs at preset times, giving no consideration to factors such as weather, lighting/sun position, whether or not a location is active with unwilling participants onsite, etc. The upfront benefit to customers who end up going with one of these marketplaces is that they are generally cheaper than independent operators. However, when you factor in all of the hidden costs in terms of delays, compromised quality, and risk it doesn’t always make sense to go with that low upfront price.
Some considerations for a customer looking to utilize a service provider for drone photography or drone videography :
- FAA Licensed and Certified to fly at your location – The FAA requires that anyone using a drone for commercial purposes must pass the FAA sUAS Pilot License test. Certain states such as North Carolina require a separate certification. Your service provider should be able to present you with these credentials.
- Demand experience -an experienced pilot should have a solid portfolio and detailed logbook for you to review.
- Safety first – A drone service provider should put safety first. This includes the safety of people on the site of the operation, the safety of the customer’s property, and the safety of other air traffic (leads to the next bullet).
- Airspace – An experienced pilot should have a full understanding of the airspace your location is in, should be able to request authorization if need be, and should be able to explain all of this to you as the customer
- Equipment – The provider should be upfront about the equipment they will use. They should be able to explain to you how their equipment will meet your requirements.
If your drone service provider is willing to cut corners on any of these aspects, where else are they willing to cut corners? Hopefully not on your deliverable!
Electric City Technology employs FAA licensed, experienced, safety minded pilots only. When warranted we include experienced visual observers on the job site to assist the pilot with a safe operation. Our focus is on the safe and reliable delivery of the deliverable that you need!