Fifteen years of survey-grade flying in India

Yes. Commercial drone operation in India requires a certified remote pilot and registered aircraft, operating within the airspace rules set by the DGCA under the Drone Rules. Flying Pixel's pilots are DGCA-certified, and that certification is part of the documentation a public tender asks to see before award.

Yes, the crew is DGCA-certified. For public and PSU work that certification is submitted alongside the deliverables as a matter of course, together with the ground control report and the accuracy statement, because public work is documented work and a review will ask for all three.

We are. Scope and permissions are the first step of the process, handled before mobilisation rather than treated as a formality on the day. On restricted sites, near airports or across sensitive infrastructure, clearance can drive the programme, so it is worth raising the location early in the conversation.

Fifteen years of flying survey-grade missions in India, across roughly one lakh square kilometres of corridors, sites and catchments, and more than 200 enterprise and government projects. Those figures are supplied by Flying Pixel and cover the full period of operation rather than a single recent year.

In-house. The same team plans the mission, flies it and processes the result, and nothing is passed to a third-party processing house. That matters for two reasons: accountability when a quantity is questioned, and data control, since project data never leaves the people responsible for it.

It stays yours. Project data is held under clear handling terms for the duration of the work and is not passed to a third party or reused elsewhere. Because processing runs in-house rather than through a subcontractor, the data does not move between organisations at any point in the pipeline.

More than fifteen survey-grade aircraft, equipped for RTK and PPK positioning and carrying photogrammetric, LiDAR and thermal payloads between them. Fleet size matters mainly for redundancy and for running several sites concurrently, so a weather day on one project or a mobilisation elsewhere does not stall your programme.

Yes. Public work is delivered with the control report, accuracy statement and pilot certification a tender review will ask for, in the format the department specified. Work has been delivered for NHAI, NHSRCL, Central Railway and NHPC to that standard.

A method rather than a number. We commit to RTK or PPK positioning, surveyed ground control, and reporting against independent checkpoints held out of processing. The achieved figure is stated on delivery and is site-specific, because terrain, vegetation and the control that can physically be placed all affect it.

Yes. Crews travel to site internationally, and we also process data captured by a local team to the same accuracy standard and deliver it in your formats. The method does not change with the country: control is established, capture is tied to it, and independent checkpoints report what was achieved.

That depends mostly on permissions rather than on crew availability, since airspace and site clearance are what usually set the earliest possible date. Once scope and permissions are settled we commit to mobilisation and delivery dates in writing at quote stage, so the programme can be planned around them.

Survey-grade capture needs suitable light and wind, so weather does occasionally move a flight. Because the schedule and delivery date are committed in writing at quote stage, a weather delay is managed against that commitment rather than absorbed silently. Monitoring clients on a fixed cycle are the ones most worth planning buffer for.

Tejas Barot, a DGCA-certified pilot at Flying Pixel, reviews the technical content published here. Method statements on this site are written to be defensible in a tender review rather than to read well, which means the accuracy claims, the sensor choices and the deliverable descriptions all have to survive being questioned.

The processed outputs, plus the paperwork that supports them: the ground control report, the independent checkpoint results, a statement of the coordinate system and datum used, and the pilot certification where the client needs it. The second half is what lets somebody else check the first half, which is the point of supplying it.

Checkpoints surveyed on the ground are deliberately held out of processing, then compared against the finished model. That comparison is the quality check, and its result is reported rather than filed. Classification is reviewed as well, because a terrain model built from a cloud that still contains vegetation will read as smooth and be wrong.

It is reflown or reprocessed. Because accuracy is measured against independent checkpoints rather than asserted, a shortfall shows up before delivery rather than after somebody has designed from it. The checkpoint report is issued either way, so the achieved figure is visible instead of being rounded into a marketing claim.

Yes, and it is the easier starting point. Send the department or client specification and the mission is planned against it: ground sample distance, control density, coordinate system, classification scheme and deliverable formats. Where a specification asks for something the site physically cannot support, we say so at quote stage rather than at handover.

Yes, on request. Some clients want the raw imagery or the unclassified point cloud for their own archive or for independent reprocessing. It is your data, so it is available. Most teams work from the processed deliverables, because the value is in the classification and the checking rather than the raw capture.

As a structured set of files in your EPSG code, datum and layer convention, with the control and checkpoint report alongside. Structuring it to your conventions before delivery rather than after is the difference between data that opens correctly first time and data somebody has to spend a day reprojecting and relayering.

Usually the checking, which is the part that does not show up in a price comparison. A cheaper quote often prices the flight rather than the control network, the independent checkpoints, the classification review and the reporting that make the result defensible. Ask any bidder for the checkpoint report from a comparable job and the difference becomes visible.

Send the site boundary, the approximate area, the accuracy your design needs and the deliverables you expect. A KML, shapefile or marked-up map is enough. A surveyor reads every brief, and you will have an approach, a deliverable list and a quote within one business day.