How do you manage a drone fleet?
An operator with more than one drone and more than one pilot has to be able to demonstrate four things at any moment: which aircraft it holds and in what condition, who is qualified to fly them, which maintenance and insurance are current, and what was flown, when and where. While that fits in a spreadsheet, it fits; the problem appears when somebody asks about one specific flight from eight months ago.
In short
- What gets audited is not the drone: it is the traceability between the drone, the pilot, the flight and its paperwork.
- Class marking and maintenance status decide which operations each aircraft can perform.
- Pilot training expires, and an expiry nobody watches invalidates flights already made.
- In the specific category, sustaining the requirements of the approved ConOps is part of the authorisation itself.
The inventory is the starting point
It sounds obvious and it is almost never complete. Each aircraft needs its identification, its class marking where it has one, its serial number, its associated batteries and its history. Without that you cannot decide which operations it supports: class and mass are what set the subcategory.
Everything else hangs off the inventory. Maintenance is scheduled per aircraft, insurance is tied to it, and flights are attributed to the one that made them. An incomplete inventory is not an administrative nuisance: it means you cannot answer a simple question about your own operation.
People expire as much as equipment
A pilot's certificate of competency has limited validity. So do specific ratings and training tied to a scenario. None of it warns you on its own, and a pilot flying with expired training is a problem discovered late and backwards.
That is why personnel control belongs in the same place as aircraft control, not in an HR folder. What you need is a view that says what expires and when, before it expires.
Flights are the evidence
The flight log is what turns a claim into a document. Which aircraft, which pilot, which operation, when, where and under what conditions. With that you answer an authority, support an insurance claim and reconstruct an occurrence.
It also serves the everyday: flight hours are what trigger preventive maintenance, and without logging them maintenance happens by calendar or by breakdown, which costs more than doing it by use.
And if you operate in the specific category, it is not optional
When you hold an operational authorisation, the requirements produced by the risk study have to be sustained over time: equipment maintained, personnel trained, procedures reviewed and occurrences documented. That traceability is part of the authorisation, not an added good practice.
Put another way: the authorisation is granted for a concept of operations, and demonstrating that you keep operating within it is your continuing obligation.
Why the spreadsheet breaks
It does not break because of size, it breaks because of relationships. A sheet holds lists; what is needed here is for a flight to know which drone and which pilot it belonged to, for maintenance to know its aircraft, and for an expired document to raise its hand on its own. A sheet does not do that, and the work of keeping it coherent grows with every person who touches it.
AXPA Fleet is built on those relationships: aircraft, pilots, operations, flights, maintenance, insurance and documentation linked together, with per-person permissions and the option to split the organisation into units when the company has branches.
Frequently asked questions
See all questions- From how many drones is it worth it?
- More than the number of drones, the jump is set by the number of people. With a single pilot a spreadsheet holds; as soon as several fly and share aircraft, coherence is lost quickly.
- Is keeping a flight log mandatory?
- It depends on the category and the State, but in any authorised operation traceability forms part of the requirements. And even where it is not mandatory, it is the only thing that defends you after an occurrence.
- Can I control what each person sees?
- Yes. In AXPA permissions are granular and the organisation can be divided into units, so a branch sees its own data and not everyone else's.
- Does it work for operations in several countries?
- Inventory, personnel and flights do not depend on the country. What is jurisdiction specific are the zones and the procedures, and those are resolved in the planner according to where you fly, not where the company is registered.
Keep reading
This guide is general information and planning support, not legal advice and not a flight authorisation. Regulations change and every country adds its own conditions. Before taking off, always check the official sources for your jurisdiction and current aeronautical information. The remote pilot in command is solely responsible for the flight.