Drone Owner, Drone Pilot, and Drone Professional: What's the difference?

Anyone can buy a drone, but there is a difference between a drone owner, a drone pilot and a drone professional.

Let's start with the drone owners. As mentioned earlier, anyone can acquire a drone, it can be a small recreational one to take aerial videos and photos or a commercial-grade Remotely Piloted Aircraft. Once you've purchased any kind of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), you are now known as a drone owner.

Drone Owners make up the large majority of the global consumer drone industry. Most times, drone owners, after they have bought their drone will go home and use a platform like YouTube to learn how to fly it.

What usually happens is that drone owners start offering services and calling themselves Drone Pilots. Unfortunately, you can't be or call yourself a drone pilot without receiving training from an accredited school.

That being said, if you complete an online course, it will not make you a drone pilot either...

A quick way to know if you have been trained by an approved school is by checking with your local civil aviation authority. They have a full list of all the approved and accredited training schools.

To attain the status of a "drone pilot", you will need to undergo and pass theoretical and practical skills courses that satisfy your local civil aviation authority regulations.

The training will also include instructions on how you can operate drones safely and responsibly. So if you haven’t been trained as per the local regulations, you aren't a drone pilot yet.

There are other people in the industry called Drone Professionals. These are individuals who work and operate within the drone industry but aren’t necessarily drone pilots.

Drone professionals include developers who are creating software specifically for drones and their different applications in the industry.

There are also repair and maintenance technicians (R&M Technicians). As the name suggests these are people who are trained to service drones and they can do so for specific brands or they can be certified to repair drones and accessories for a number of manufacturers.

Pilots are also counted among the class of drone professionals, but they operate within the scope of flying drones. Additionally, there are ratings like Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS), Industry Specific Training, and others that pilots can attain on top of their basic Remote Pilot Licence.

Also in the drone professionals space, there are data analysts. These individuals, analyse and interpret the data that drones capture depending on the various use case applications.

We also can't forget drone educators who train and teach drone pilots and professionals as well as drone consultants who help businesses integrate drones into their operations.