Night Flight
As a professional drone pilot, conquering the hours of darkness means acquiring new knowledge, thinking seriously about safety and clearing bureaucratic hurdles—but it opens up a whole new world that only a few have begun to explore.
According to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), there are 180,000 certified commercial drone operators in the United States, and waivers have been issued to 4,400 of them allowing for night time flights. Simple arithmetic reveals that this elite group constitutes 2.5 percent of the total population of drone pilots. If you’re not one of them, then each aircraft you own is really only half a drone, because you can only fly it for half of the year—the half when the sun is above the horizon.
Applying to the FAA for a certificate of waiver may seem like a daunting prospect. Everyone in the commercial operations community has heard horror stories of applications repeatedly rejected through an opaque bureaucratic process. It can seem like only the lucky, the supremely well-educated, those wealthy enough to hire specialist attorneys and people with connections are able to navigate the process successfully.
Earning the right to fly at night is a challenge, to be sure—but it isn’t impossible. Like filing your taxes or climbing Mt. Everest, the key to success is a systematic approach: begin by understanding the process, break it down into smaller steps that can be more easily accomplished and simply persevering. As in any other aspect of life, the percentage of successful outcomes achieved by people who never begin or give up is zero.
See it through and your odds of success improve dramatically from there, and along the way you are sure to learn things about the FAA, about aviation and
