PDRA01 Risk Assessment & Emergency Procedures

PDRA01 is a pre-defined risk assessment: the CAA has already set the operating envelope and the mitigations that go with it. Your job is not to re-derive that envelope, but to show how your operation stays inside it and how you control the hazards specific to your aircraft, your crew and your sites.

A useful risk assessment records each significant hazard, the harm it could cause, the controls that reduce it and the residual position once those controls are in place. It should read as decisions a competent person made, not as generic text copied from a template.

The predefined limits are themselves your first layer of mitigation. A minimum horizontal separation of 50 m must be maintained from uninvolved persons, reducible to 30 m during take-off and landing. Assemblies of people must never be overflown, and a minimum horizontal separation of 50 m from assemblies must be kept (also observing the 1:1 rule: horizontal separation at least equal to the height of the aircraft).

The unmanned aircraft must be maintained within 120 m (400 ft) of the closest point of the surface of the earth. Obstacles taller than 105 m may be overflown to a maximum of 15 m above the obstacle, provided the aircraft stays within 50 m horizontally of it.

Record how each limit is maintained in practice — who monitors separation, how height is judged, what stops the aircraft drifting toward uninvolved people — rather than simply restating the number.

List what could realistically go wrong for the operation you actually fly, not for every drone operation imaginable. A photography flight over a car park and a survey along a hedgerow share a template but not the same hazards.

For each hazard, decide the practical control and the no-go threshold that would stop the flight. A control the crew cannot perform under pressure is not a control; write ones people can follow on site.

Emergency procedures describe the immediate actions for the failures you decided were credible: loss of the command-and-control link, loss of propulsion or control, a fly-away, a person entering the operating area, injury, fire or a crash away from the launch point.

Lost-link behaviour deserves particular attention. A lone remote pilot must set an appropriate maximum distance and a minimum return-to-home battery level before flight. Confirm what the aircraft does on link loss, that it is configured correctly, and that you have tested it — then record that evidence rather than assuming the default.

Some events must be reported, and the procedure should make that unmistakable on the day. Occurrences must be reported in line with UK Reg (EU) 376/2014 and CAP 722; reportable accidents must be reported to the AAIB in line with UK Reg (EU) 996/2010.

Keep emergency contacts, reporting routes and the evidence you would need to preserve together, so a stressed crew is not searching for a phone number or wondering whether an event is reportable.

A risk assessment is only current if it matches the operation in front of you. Re-check it when the aircraft, crew, site, weather or airspace changes, and capture the decision instead of relying on the earlier plan.

Drone Ready turns your answers into a risk assessment and emergency-procedures record shaped around the PDRA01 limits, with conservative assumptions logged separately so you can see exactly what still needs an operator decision before you adopt it.