Global drone industry review reports substantial increase in commercial flight hours

Drone Industry Insights’ (DII) Global Drone Industry Review 2024 illustrates that the drone industry is demonstrating increasing operational sophistication and market specialisation. 

“Advanced mission capabilities and complex use cases are becoming more ubiquitous, suggesting a shift toward more widespread commercial applications,” DII says, adding that scalable business models will strengthen further growth. 

The report notes a substantial increase in global commercial flight hours to 10.8 million in 2024, which is a growth of 29 percent compared to 2023. “Asia continues to be the leading region for drone operations, with around 3.8 million flight hours, followed by Europe and North America.”

Beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) operations continue to play catch-up as VLOS dominates, recording an increase of up to 61 percent in every region worldwide. The report says South America and Oceania showed the most significant increase in VLOS, followed by Europe and the US, which had almost similar flight hours.

DII says BVLOS operations remain an ongoing challenge for most countries. “Only a handful of countries can scale BVLOS operations so substantially that they can increase the BVLOS share of an entire region (Asia, MEA). Europe and North America show a strong increase in the VLOS mode, but the increase in BVLOS is only in the single digits.”

Differing national implementations of drone regulations inevitably impact the growth of BVLOS in different regions. For example, the report cites Australia, Norway, and China as enabling more BVLOS flights through simplified and digital application processes, airspace integration, and close cooperation with the industry. 

Overall, the report shows a positive trend in utilisation and a slight increase in the positivity of expectations. However, DII says many smaller market players struggle with sales and orders alongside a few established brands and service providers.

“The biggest challenge is still the over-administrated drone regulation, which, on the one hand, leads to immense compliance costs and, on the other hand, has not yet been able to solve the problem of lengthy approval processes. Drone operators report that for 45 percent of all applications, the approval process still takes longer than one month – and for 5 percent, even more than six months.”

Operational costs are the second-biggest issue for drone operators, the report says. “Many end users believe that using drones significantly reduces costs compared to traditional methods. While this has been clearly proven in VLOS operations, BVLOS operations are associated with high, sometimes even higher, costs for maintaining flight safety and expensive equipment and personnel.”

The report calls for further improvements in regulation. “As of today, scalability through standards and regulations is not possible. Regulators often don’t move at the same pace as the industry, offer few solutions, and are hard to convince of suggestions. Regulatory processes remain very individual and labor-intensive, making navigating those frameworks complex and lengthy.”

On industry partnerships, the report suggests that “instead of partnering with a company that can provide a component to your business, it’s time to partner with similar companies and bundle the market power and marketing capacity to the industry and regulators”. The report also lists the leading global players.