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'A job that would take a surveyor two days on foot, a drone does in 45 minutes.'
For illustrative purposes. Picture: iStock
Imagine having a job where you can be several metres underground one day, freezing your toes off at dawn another and then, the very next day, working in Zambia, while never leaving your control room seat in Joburg.
That’s what being a professional drone pilot is all about and Andrea Chetty, 33, has loved every second of the past eight years captaining these machines.
“It started as a bit of curiosity and turned into a career,” she said.
She was in her early 20s when she left a corporate consumer goods job in dairy, “milk and cheese”, and started off with her first drone.
“I already had my private pilot’s licence and wanted to explore all aspects of aviation. So I bought a drone to take photos for fun. Then I literally Googled ‘what else can a drone do?’” It’s a simple act that almost changed everything for Chetty.
She did her drone licence, then her instructor rating and joined drone operating company RocketDNA in Sandton, where she’s been remotely flying drones and training new pilots for about seven years.
While both drones and traditional, human-occupied aircraft share the same airspace, they are worlds apart in every aspect, she said.
“With a drone, you’re like a third person, reliant on screens and data. It’s a different kind of situational awareness. You’re constantly checking systems, keeping an eye on birds, the environment, who’s around you.”
In other aircraft, the pilot is present, front and centre in the action, in the sky. Drones are from the ground… up.
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“Everyone thinks you’re just going to be a drone pilot sitting in an office,” she said. “But you have to be in the field. Whether you’re on a mining site or doing security surveys, you’re out there, flying missions, collecting data, then processing and interpreting it.”
There’s no A to be flying. Rather, briefs often take pilots to curious places. “Flying underground in a diamond mine was a little scary,” Chetty said. “It was dusty, dark, completely enclosed. But it was also a real eye-opener,” she said.
Her career has also taken her to the outback. “I got to go to Australia and work on a conveyor belt project. It was so much fun, so different, getting to go places and do things that are off the beaten track.”
But technology is making leaving the control room to operate drones on location more of a nice-to-have.
“With new drone docks, the mobile pod that serves as the airport for the device, you can sit in Johannesburg and launch a drone sitting hundreds of kilometres away in Mpumalanga or the Northern Cape. It takes off, flies its mission, lands, offloads the data, and you send it to the client.”
Technology moves quickly in the drone space and Chetty said that’s part of the appeal.
“I’m a geek. Anything new and techy that comes across my desk, I’m playing with it. That’s what keeps it exciting,” she said.
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Pilots of conventional aircraft often share anecdotes of aircraft that have quirks, characteristics or even mechanical ticks. It’s as if some aircraft have personalities of their own.
“Drones may not have feelings, but some definitely have personality, too,” said Chetty. “A little bit of swagger.”
And while drones are still commonly associated with hobbies, television shoots, weddings and warzones, Chetty said that the scope of application is so much broader.
“In South Africa, drones are used for agriculture, security, inspections, and surveys. There’s even a study in Ghana using drones to inspect cocoa tree canopies. A job that would take a surveyor two days on foot, a drone does in 45 minutes.”
Just as with normal aviation, drone pilots must comply with civil aviation laws and rules. This is why becoming qualified is so important. Each flight follows a methodical routine.
“Pre-flight planning, landowner permissions, checks, radios, monitoring Notams [air traffic notices], uploading your flight plan. It’s often more admin than flying a manned aircraft,” said Chetty.
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