Upfront Costs
The capital cost of UAV equipment is certainly lower than that of manned aircraft, but professional UAV flight operations do cost money.
While a pilot is not required on the plane itself, UAV flight operations still require a minimum of two members of staff to be mobilized and catered for on site. UAV operations require time for risk analyses and planning prior to flight. A professional flight operator needs to invest in and carry the correct insurance and certifications. An often-overlooked cost on UAV survey projects is the time required to plan and survey a ground-control framework on the site to ensure the data is delivered to the agreed specification.
The UAV solution is not always cheaper. Experienced aerial survey providers have explained to me that they have costed out projects they really thought would be suitable for UAV operations, only to find that to use their regular aircraft would be cheaper.
And that’s before accounting for the hidden costs of proper UAV usage.