AeroLuxe was built on a hiring rule we have never relaxed: every pilot on staff holds an FAA Commercial Pilot License earned in a manned aircraft, in addition to the Part 107 Remote Pilot Certificate that federal law requires for commercial drone work.
The rule costs us. Certificated commercial pilots are harder to find than drone operators and they cost more to employ. We keep it because the failures in this industry are almost never failures of equipment. They are failures of judgement: flying into deteriorating weather because a client is waiting, entering controlled airspace without authorization because the approval was inconvenient, or pressing a shot that should have been abandoned.
Commercial flight training is, more than anything, an education in not doing those things. It is hundreds of hours of being taught that the schedule is never worth the risk, verified by an examiner who is professionally uninterested in how confident you feel.
An aeronautical knowledge test covering regulation, airspace, weather and loading. Required for all commercial drone operations. There is no flight time requirement of any kind.
This is the legal minimum. Every legitimate operator has it.
A minimum of 250 logged flight hours, an FAA medical certificate, instrument-rated competence in weather and navigation, cross-country and night experience, and a practical checkride flown in front of an FAA examiner.
This is our hiring floor. Very few drone companies can say that.
You are told which pilot is assigned when the date is confirmed, and that is the pilot who shows up.
Has been a certified pilot since 2017, former flight instructor, and has operated out of some of the busiest Class B airspace on the East Coast. Signs off on every flight in controlled airspace.
Practices that are routine in a cockpit and rare in this industry.
Standard operating procedures, emergency procedures, maintenance intervals and crew duty limits, all documented and followed. Available for review by any client whose procurement process asks for it.
Weather, NOTAMs, TFRs, airspace, terrain, obstacles, lost-link behaviour and the diversion plan — briefed aloud before the aircraft is powered on, on a routine roof inspection as much as on a complex site.
Complex sites are flown with a dedicated visual observer in addition to the pilot. It costs more and it is not always required. Around energised infrastructure and active construction, we do it anyway.
Any crew member can stop a flight for any reason with no argument and no consequence. An aborted flight is rescheduled at no charge. This is the single most important thing on this page.
Data is checked before we leave the site, so a gap is discovered while we can still fix it — not three days later when the client opens the delivery.
AeroLuxe operates within RoeJin, a consortium of technical practices spanning software, engineering and design. It means the data we hand you can be built into whatever comes next — a client portal, an asset management integration, a reporting pipeline — without introducing a third party.
Pick a date, tell us what you need, and a commercial pilot reviews the airspace before we ever quote the job. Most requests are answered within one business day.
