BVLOS Operations Report

Our BVLOS Operations Report provides a unique look into the potential and market sizes for BVLOS application. Despite current regulatory limitations, there are already both an urban and a rural market for BVLOS flights, and this report provides information about them in terms of value and unit sales, while also separating by region. Most importantly, the report provides an entire chapter describing the potential of BVLOS to impact each of 17 industry verticals, including distinctions between manual BVLOS, BVLOS on waypoints and fully-automated BVLOS.

BVLOS flights are perhaps one of the most highly-anticipated, most-profitable, and exemplary uses of drone technology. Allowing a drone to fly beyond-visual-line-of-sight unleashes its potential by letting the drone reach several destinations exponentially faster and more efficiently than cars, helicopters, planes, or other means. In scenarios where a car has geographic obstacles (e.g. rivers or rocky ranges) or a helicopter cannot land, a drone provides a perfect alternative for deliveries or other activities.

Unlike our Manufacturers Ranking or our Service Providers Ranking, this report does not include any company profiles or describe any information about individual drone companies. Instead it focuses on the macroeconomic view of the BVLOS market as well as the more general types of applications (e.g. spraying in Agriculture or Mapping in Construction) that would increase the efficiency and profitability of using drone technology. This means it also does not include particular Case Studies or in-depth application methods which can be found in our Drone Application Report.

The majority of national aviation authorities have published drone regulation for the recreational and commercial use of drones, where the operator must comply with organizational and operational rules. However, when it comes to BVLOS operations, different countries can have more or less strict procedures to apply for exemptions/permissions to fly BVLOS under limited conditions.

In addition, international standards (which are generally not binding) help to harmonize the industry and mitigate risks vis-à-vis quality and safety issues, and even though there are no BVLOS-specific standards, there is a lot of work being done on technical and procedural standards which support the implementation of BVLOS rules. All of these issues are addressed in-depth in Chapter 6 of the report.