Flying close to people

[Doodi]

I assume its a bad idea to fly a mavic close to people. even if you go slow and they know you're doing it. or am i wrong? I see a lot of videos online of people flying mavics close to people. even this dji one with the mini mavic

i have a cinewhoop drone which has bumpers on it and meant to go slow and you can fly it around your friends. if you bump into anything it just bounces off.

Doodi

 

[Mossiback]

I assume its a bad idea to fly a mavic close to people. even if you go slow and they know you're doing it. or am i wrong? I see a lot of videos online of people flying mavics close to people. even this dji one with the mini mavic...

It depends on the regs where you are, but generally you are not supposed to fly over people.

Don't use online videos as a rules guide. You can find a lot of crazy/stupid/dangerous flying examples there. As for the DJI video, they can claim that the people in their video were paid actors, they obtained waivers, etc.

 

[old man mavic]

follow the rules that apply in your country
when the advert was made DJI would have got the people in the videos permission to fly close to them
its similar to people at a wedding the drone flier would have been deemed to be in control of the people in the pics and would have got permission to fly and film them
that is totally different to just flying over people because you can

 

[FoxhallGH]

Even if you are confident about flying your drone, it's just not a good idea about flying around people. Here in the UK, our laws tell us that we must have at least 30 metres clearance from 'people' when taking off & landing, and 50 metres clearance at all other times (except for crowds of 1,000 or more, where we just can't fly over and within 150 metres sideways). You can even get problems with prop-guards. I saw a video of a drone that hit a young woman in the head, and even with prop-guards on, pulled her hair into the props and rather painfully ended up as an untidy looking hat!

 

[Mavic Mac]

Being a new PIC you may want to check out some of the info re UAS at the FAA - HERE is a link

Also it would be good to get AirMap or a similar app. There are areas around Atlanta that are controlled airspace.

 

[BigAl07]

In the US it's illegal to fly OVER any person or portion of a person but flying "near" someone isn't currently illegal in the USA. That doesn't mean flying near people is a GOOD ideal it's just not currently "illegal".

 

[MAvic_South_Oz]

In the US it's illegal to fly OVER any person or portion of a person but flying "near" someone isn't currently illegal in the USA.

It's amazing that is the case in the US, isn't it ?
I mean a buffer for any control issues just seems like basic common sense safety, like the supposed buffer between manned aircraft airspace and drone airspace.
Maybe sometime soon the US will come into line with other airspace regulators like CAA (50m) in the UK, and CASA (30m) in Australia.
(These are lateral distances, not away from vertically.)
It's a bit of an impost sometimes, but a good thing.

 

[Doodi]

yeah, i heard that in the us the laws are pretty basic but that's kind of why i asked. i want to do some choregraphed stuff with some friends but i dont want to do anything risky. i know what I can do with my cinewhoop. check this out:

i can't fly that well yet but i'm getting pretty good. i just want to use a better camera like on my mmavic 2 pro.

Doodi

 

[lannes]

Never fly near people

Toddler's eyeball sliced in half by drone propeller

An 18-month-old boy loses an eye after it is sliced in half by the propeller of a drone flown by a family friend.

www.bbc.com

I wouldn't even with the cinewhoop

 

[Doodi]

Never fly near people

Toddler's eyeball sliced in half by drone propeller

An 18-month-old boy loses an eye after it is sliced in half by the propeller of a drone flown by a family friend.

www.bbc.com

I wouldn't even with the cinewhoop

ohhhh. thats so bad. poor kid. i agree.

at least that couldnt happen with a whoop because of the ducts. but ive been seeing videos of them getting stuck in peoples hair. not as bad as an eye but still.

Doodi

 

[Olav van Gerven]

Just a thing to consider, brought up by an old man

A few years ago, I had my first drone (non dji, cheap, no pain if it crashes) and became very confident in what I could do with it. Since I never make mistakes, I flew close to my house in the back garden and then got it up hijgher and higher. I moved it sideways and it passed a busy street - at least, that is what this unfailable pilot thought, but the stupid drone had his own will. Being experienced as I was, after all I had one hour of flight time without any serious problems, I only could watch the drone moving and moving, the all of a sudden, it came down in high speed and crashed. As I picked it up, it was just less then 50 cm away from a busy footpath. I was lucky, that right at the moment of the crash, no person was walking there.
Now, looking back, it was a clear pilot-error. Me, the Unfailable, had simply panicked.
My conclusion: I will not fly over people, simply because I now know that I am not as unfailable as I thought I was (that acknowledgement hurts) and I do not want to endanger people. Not even if they are friends.

 

[Deleted member 114292]

I don’t know the exact details of what you plan to do with your friends. But if they are part of the operation and understand the risks it’s perfectly fine.
If you understand what you were doing and you due care while something could go wrong the actual probability of an injury is very low.
If you’re filming them from say 20 or 30 feet away even if isomething does go wrong it’s very unlikely they would be an injury.
Everything we do carries some risk the point is to understand the risk and mitigate it as best as possible.
A great deal of drone mishaps occur because the uninformed pilot did not understand the risk.

 

[BigAl07]

I don’t know the exact details of what you plan to do with your friends. But if they are part of the operation and understand the risks it’s perfectly fine.
If you understand what you were doing and you due care while something could go wrong the actual probability of an injury is very low.
If you’re filming them from say 20 or 30 feet away even if isomething does go wrong it’s very unlikely they would be an injury.
Everything we do carries some risk the point is to understand the risk and mitigate it as best as possible.
A great deal of drone mishaps occur because the uninformed pilot did not understand the risk.

This could be read 2 different ways so I'm going to go to the worse case and comment:

If you're insinuating flying "over" someone, they must be part of the Flight Crew in order to fly over them. Some people mistakenly believe that so long as the people are aware of the risk and "approve" the flight over them it's perfectly legal. That is very much NOT the case. Even if they sign releases, seal it with their blood and pinky swear it's OK with them it's still ILLEGAL to fly over people who are not part of the Flight Crew. I fully understand you may not have meant "Flight OVER People" at all but it's better to be clear about this to nip any myths in the bud.

Also, from an official stand point - If there is an incident between a person and UAS the UAS operator has not sufficiently taken enough care/caution to eliminate the risk to people/persons.

 

[The Editor]

This could be read 2 different ways so I'm going to go to the worse case and comment:

If you're insinuating flying "over" someone, they must be part of the Flight Crew in order to fly over them. Some people mistakenly believe that so long as the people are aware of the risk and "approve" the flight over them it's perfectly legal. That is very much NOT the case. Even if they sign releases, seal it with their blood and pinky swear it's OK with them it's still ILLEGAL to fly over people who are not part of the Flight Crew. I fully understand you may not have meant "Flight OVER People" at all but it's better to be clear about this to nip any myths in the bud.

Also, from an official stand point - If there is an incident between a person and UAS the UAS operator has not sufficiently taken enough care/caution to eliminate the risk to people/persons.

That's must be a weird USA thing then.
How on Earth would you be able to fly directly over actors on a closed set?

UK rules are for more sensible if written permission is given.

 

[BigAl07]

That's must be a weird USA thing then.
How on Earth would you be able to fly directly over actors on a closed set?

UK rules are for more sensible if written permission is given.

Closed Set - either you have a Waiver for ~107.39 or you’re operating under some type of COA which has the allowance for operating over designated people. Pretty straight forward and not something just anyone can get right off the street.

I’m sure we could all point out items in other countries that don’t make sense to us but what good does that serve anyone?

 

[old man mavic]

i think that the OP actually asked about flying close to people,
he did not specify flying over them, when i am with my friend and we are flying say 15 ft apart
then we are both aware of the others position,and after looking around in a 360 %circle ,then regardless of what each of us is doing we will announce in a loud voice taking off
this way the other person knows that there will be a drone flying close by, its the same when we land check around and then say landing in a loud voice, this is one of the reasons that you should have enough battery left for landing in case you have to hold off because someone has appeared out of the blue and is within your 30m airspace you need time to deal with the situation,drone flying is no different to any other forms of flight,in respect of take off and landing being the most critical moments when accidents can and do happen

 

[Deleted member 114292]

This could be read 2 different ways so I'm going to go to the worse case and comment:

If you're insinuating flying "over" someone, they must be part of the Flight Crew in order to fly over them. Some people mistakenly believe that so long as the people are aware of the risk and "approve" the flight over them it's perfectly legal. That is very much NOT the case. Even if they sign releases, seal it with their blood and pinky swear it's OK with them it's still ILLEGAL to fly over people who are not part of the Flight Crew. I fully understand you may not have meant "Flight OVER People" at all but it's better to be clear about this to nip any myths in the bud.

Also, from an official stand point - If there is an incident between a person and UAS the UAS operator has not sufficiently taken enough care/caution to eliminate the risk to people/persons.

Not sure how you took "If you’re filming them from say 20 or 30 feet away " to mean over. But I get it your need to point these things out.

 

[CactusJackSlade]

FAA is very specific about flying OVER people. In the LAANC app if you check the box that asks if you will be flying over people it is an automatic rejection for authorization (At least every time I've tried). It IS possible to do so, but special waivers and protections need to be in place as mentioned above.

 

[Deleted member 114292]

FWIW For recreational pilots:
"Never fly over groups of people, public events, or stadiums full of people."
What is a group of people? You'll have to decide that.

Recreational Flyers & Modeler Community-Based Organizations

www.faa.gov

 

[ajl_mo]

With the caveat that every situation is different I use a "one foot (meter) away for every foot (meter) in the air" as an absolute minimum for people/roads/etc. I also sign the area that aerial photography is in progress so at least a random person wandering into the area hopefully has an idea that a drone is in the air.