Dronedesk case study
drone training company

Ian and his team was looking for the impossible: a way to save time on drone flight planning while also making those flights safer.

And they found it in Dronedesk.

What is Eagle Eye Innovations?

Formed in 2014, Eagle Eye Innovations offers a huge range of drone services from a base of solid expertise.

With 90% of its team coming from the military, the business employs a huge wealth of aviation and unmanned flight experience to train everyone from private businesses to the emergency services and military, as well as offering flight services such as safety inspections and photography/videography, surveys, and more.

With such a wealth of aviation and unmanned flight experience, Eagle Eye's clients can be confident that any operations are conducted to the most rigorous safety standards.

But Ian had spotted a potential risk.

Saving time

Ian's team used a process familiar to many drone operators: manually gathering data. Google Maps, the Met Office, UK Grid Finder, Altitude Angel. The pilots were bouncing back and forth between browser tabs to get an understanding of the ground, the airspace, and the hazards they might encounter.

Dronedesk eliminates a lot of the laborious research by bringing all the data into one place. Now, instead of hunting down all the data he needs, Ian gets it at his fingertips as soon as he enters the time and location of the flight.

And the amount of time that saves is staggering.

This time-saving means that Ian and his team are able to take on more jobs, but also makes scheduling them that much easier. Rather than having to factor in hours of planning, Ian only has to think about how far away the job is and whether he's available.

Ian can even plan a flight for a colleague, so they can leave straightaway and arrive with the planning done and just the on-site checks to perform.

And this time saving offers another benefit: it makes it easier to conduct safer drone flights.

Risk mitigation

Manually collecting data opens a drone operator up to error. Perhaps your personal process sees you head to UK Grid Finder, then to Altitude Angel, then to Google Maps. But perhaps you realise you forgot to get something from UK Grid Finder, and inadvertently forget to check Google Maps properly. It's so easy to do, yet you might miss a hazard as a result.

Perhaps nothing would come of it. But if your plan is audited or, worse, an accident occurred, you could find yourself facing uncomfortable investigations or even fines.

This is where Dronedesk can make flight planning quicker and safer at the same time. By automating the data collection process, we put all the information at your fingertips. You can supplement it with your own information, or dig into it if you want to know more about a potential hazard. But it's all there.

There's another risk to creating manual flight plans: you'll have spent hours planning before you even start looking at hazards, by which point you're probably tired and your attention is drifting.

By reducing the time spent on gathering location data, a pilot has more time and attention to carefully assess any hazards and add them to their flight plan. Those hazards are easier to mitigate, too, by the careful, process-driven way our plans are laid out.

And, of course, if an incident were to occur, you'd need to be able to demonstrate that you'd done everything you could to prevent it. Dronedesk keeps your rock-solid flight plan and hazard mitigation in one place, easy to access should you ever need it.

Always improving

Ian enjoys how Dronedesk helps him plan flights faster and safer, and he's keen to share that when Eagle Eye provide their training services too.

And we're always ready to listen to feedback and make the improvements that will make Dronedesk a platform that anyone and everyone will want to use.

If you want to make flight planning quicker and safer, start your free trial of Dronedesk. You'll have access to all our time-saving features and see just how safe your flights will be with our software, and how much extra confidence you'll be able to give your customers.

All quotes are from Ian Galloway - Training & Risk Manager at Eagle Eye Innovations