Many insurers are now writing their own rules to cover pilots who are finished waiting for federal regulations.
Every day, thousands of drones fly low and high in the sky without receiving government approval, so the latest insurance news has shown that insurers have come up with their own safety regulations to help to fill the gap that has been left in place by official regulators.
These drones are being used by movie studios, real estate companies, and other businesses and industries.
The devices provide, among other things, an inexpensive way to see and record from a bird’s eye perspective. That said, as long as the drones are being flown for commercial purposes, federal regulations are not complete with regards to which behaviors should and should not be considered to be safe and allowable.
Therefore, the insurance news has started to break out to show that coverage is becoming available and one Colorado broker has already written policies for a surprising 2,600 drones. Similarly, a company in San Francisco has amassed a group of 1,000 trained operators that can be hired by companies that need the drones flown, so that the flying can be done on their behalf.
This insurance news means that drones filming, photographing, and monitoring can now be covered.
The purposes for the drones can be anything from monitoring construction sites to recording sporting events among other simple tasks that are completed the most quickly and inexpensively from the air. That said, these devices are being used despite the fact that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has not yet created its final regulations for the use of drones. In fact, it is believed that it will be another two years before the official regulations for the use of commercial drones will be issued.
In November, the FAA was able to win a legal ruling that stated that it would be able to apply the current aviation laws in the country to drones. That said, no commercial drones are permitted to fly without a formal waiver. At the time of the writing of this article, only 39 of those formal waivers had been issued for flying drones.
Clearly, drone pilots simply aren’t willing to wait, which is being seen as good insurance news for many in the industry. Insurance companies, agents, and brokers are finding that covering the users of these devices has presented them with a considerable new opportunity.
