Anyone wanting to use a drone to survey fields, orchards, vineyards, crops is surely celebrating the FAA’s new rules. The rules do away with the requirement for a licensed aircraft pilot on the controls and for an additional individual to serve as an observer on every flight. We knew this would save the operator money, but did
n’t realize how much until we went to update our ROI calculator. The new rules save a service provider tens of thousands of dollars and increase the ROI of operating such a service significantly.
When we were updating our ROI Calculator for the new rules, just for fun we took a look comparing a typical operator’s cost structure under the new and the old regimes. We were surprised to find that even our base example operator would save over $16,000 per drone in operational costs under the new regulations. For our base example this increased the ROI by 100%! Instead of removing the old scenario from the calculator we left it in, so anyone can enter the numbers specific to their business and get a feel for the savings under the new rules.
Try the calculator yourself to see how much you could make by adding drones into your precision program and how much the new rules could save you.
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