Drone insurance for commercial operators. Cover for the drone itself, and for the damage it can do.

Quick answerYes, generally. A commercial drone policy covers accidental loss of or damage to the drone itself (sometimes called hull cover), whether that is a crash or a theft, in the air, on the ground or in transit. Ground equipment and spares are insured as their own separate amounts, and whether a camera or sensor payload is covered depends on how the policy defines the drone, which is one of the first things we check on a quote.

The equipment side is scheduled item by item, not as one lump. The drone carries its own insured value, and ground equipment, the controller and base station, and your spares are separate amounts again.

The boundary is damage from an incident, not the ageing of the equipment, so a drone that failed rather than crashed generally sits outside this half of the policy. Pilot error is a different matter. It is not usually named as an exclusion in itself, provided the flight was work you had declared and the drone was operated in line with the manufacturer's guidance and the other conditions on your policy, including the pilot's experience or training and compliance with the aviation rules.

On the quotes we have seen, the excess on the drone itself is struck as a percentage of its insured value rather than a flat amount, so it rises with the value you declare, and where one crash damages several insured items only the highest single excess applies. Neither point gets explained by an online form.

You set an amount for the drone and for each piece of named equipment, and it is worth treating that figure as a guide rather than a promise. The insured value on your schedule is a ceiling: what actually gets paid is generally worked out on what the drone is worth on the day it is lost, not on what you paid for it. Declaring a high value does not turn an old drone into a new one, and declaring a low one caps what you can get back.

Quick answerA drone policy covers accidents, not the ageing of your equipment and not the money you lose while it is out of service. It also attaches to the work you declared, so cover generally follows the activities on the schedule rather than the drone itself. These three conditions are worth reading before anything else.

The traps that catch commercial operators most often:

• A drone that simply stops working. Wear and tear, breakdown, and mechanical or electrical failure on their own are generally excluded. Damage from a single recorded incident is the thing being insured.
• A scratched or fogged lens on its own. Damage to a camera or sensor where the drone itself was not damaged at the same time is generally excluded.
• The money you lose while you are grounded. Lost income and lost contracts are generally excluded, although many policies do offer to pay the reasonable cost of hiring a similar drone so you can still meet work you had already agreed to.
• Work you never declared. Cover generally attaches to the activities listed on your schedule. Take on night operations, work beyond visual line of sight, spraying or delivery mid-year without telling anyone, and you may be flying uninsured on those jobs. Recreational flying sits outside a commercial policy entirely.
• More drones in the air than you declared. Policies commonly cap the number of aircraft airborne at one time. Exceed it and a claim can fall over.
• The pilot at the controls. Cover commonly depends on the operator having a minimum amount of flight experience or having completed formal training.
• The gear in the ute, and the gear in the shed. Cover for equipment in transit or in storage generally depends on it being packed to the manufacturer's guidance or kept in a locked, padded case, and on the quotes we have seen the trailer itself is not covered by a drone policy.
• Flying outside the area on your schedule. Policies of this kind commonly apply a geographical limit, so where you can fly and still be covered is a schedule selection rather than something the product decides for you.
• The thing you were hired to inspect. Third party liability generally excludes property in your own care, custody or control, which is a real issue for inspection operators working on and around a client's asset.
• Your advice, as opposed to your flying. Liability arising from advice or a breach of professional duty is generally excluded from the ground operations side of the liability cover. If you deliver a survey, a report or a set of measurements a client acts on, that exposure sits with professional indemnity insurance, not the drone policy.
• Chemicals. Spraying, seeding and anything involving chemicals is generally excluded from the standard liability sections and has to be arranged deliberately.

Cover also comes with conditions attached, and the important one is that you must comply with the aviation rules and hold every licence, permit and certificate your operation legally needs. Commercial operators carry licensing obligations, so confirm yours with the regulator. Insurance and approval are two different things. A policy generally assumes you are compliant. It does not stand in for compliance, and it will not rescue a flight that broke the rules.

We will be straight with you, because it is more useful than the alternative. Drone insurance is not a specialty we advertise and we do not hold ourselves out as drone experts. What we have is access to insurers who write drone and RPAS cover through the markets we work with, and the ability to arrange it properly.

What we bring is the broking discipline. Here are the checks we would run on a drone policy, so you can judge whether they are worth having. We would start with what you actually fly and what you actually get paid to do, then look at whether the activities on the schedule match it, because that single field decides whether half your work is insured. We would test the liability limit against what your contracts and site inductions require rather than against a default, ask whether the ground side of your liability has been bought or assumed, set the insured values against what the equipment is genuinely worth now, and get financiers and co-owners noted where they need to be.

If drone cover is one part of a business that also has vehicles, equipment, premises and staff, we can look at the whole thing rather than one policy at a time. See Business Insurance for how the rest usually fits together.