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How to Fly a drone at a UK Airport - legally in 2025

Updated: Jan 14

Flying drones near airports and around aircraft in the UK is illegal, as dictated by the drone laws set out by the CAA. Legally flying drones at airports is achievable, yet complex, and involves a mountain of paperwork, months of meetings, written permissions, risk assessments and in-person briefing of all parties. Once you overcome these monumental hurdles, it gets very exciting. Skirting the line between what is legal for drone flying in the UK is scary, but it allows us to capture drone footage that has never been seen before.


Vertical Aerospace, Kemble


Vertical Aerospace is an electric vertical take-off and landing (EVTOL) aircraft company based in Bristol, that asked Bad Wolf Horizon to capture the maiden flights of their latest round of testing in 2023 and 2025. Piloted by an ex-fighter pilot, this new type of aircraft must slowly build up its testing programme by slowly pushing the "test envelope" of both the pilot and the aircraft, safely building up enough data to push development forward and we were there to capture some of their major milestones.


The Vertical Aerospace AC2 EVTOL standing proudly on the helipad.
The Vertical Aerospace AC2 EVTOL standing proudly on the helipad.

In January of 2025, Vertical Aerospace's AC2 aircraft completed its "Thrustborne" milestone. Taking off vertically, before lowering the front propellors and advancing in forward flight. This testing took place at Kemble Aerodrome in the Cotswolds and the Bad Wolf Horizon team spent months planning and preparing, meetings, paperwork and risk assessments that needed to be put in place before we could fly.


The best advice I can give you for operating drones at airports is to set out your "drone distance conditions" in a document, that runs in parallel with your usual pre-flight paperwork and risk assessment. This additional document allows both parties to figure out the distance that both the drone pilot and aircraft pilot are comfortable to operate within. This could include the test aircraft in its different states - you might want to be closer when the aircraft is on the ground and further away during flight. This document should be signed off by both the test pilot and ATC for safe and efficient operations.


Flying the DJI Inspire 3 and with Kemble ATC watching over our shoulder, as we stood standing 150m from the runway, we absolutely nailed the shots 🤙


The full film, directed and edited by the legendary Deadbeat Films is coming soon!




Virgin Orbit, Cornwall

Virgin Orbit's "Cosmic Girl" arriving at Spaceport Cornwall at Newquay Airport
Virgin Orbit's "Cosmic Girl" arriving at Spaceport Cornwall at Newquay Airport

Bad Wolf Horizon is an award-winning drone team, based in Cornwall. In 2022 and 2023, the team was approached by Virgin Orbit to help capture the UK's first rocket launch from UK soil at Newquay Airport, to provide aerial cinematography and to cover all aspects of this historic event.


Flying over a period of roughly 6 months, capturing it all from the landing of Virgin Orbit's "Cosmic Girl", a converted Boeing 747, the arrival of the rocket "Start Me Up" on an RAF C17 and even covering the wet dress rehearsal prior to launch, all while skirting the lines of what is legal, meant that the team captured some of the most iconic aerial drone footage of any aircraft on UK soil.


For this project, the team used the DJI Inspire 2, utilising its long lenses and exceptional low-light capabilities to maintain our separation distances from aircraft as they came in to land at Newquay.


The footage from our drones made its way onto a Channel 4 Documentary called "A Very British Space Launch". The highlight film from the Start Me Up Rocket Launch, which inevitably failed is available to watch below.



With Bad Wolf Horizon, no hurdle is too big or too small. When it comes to making the impossible become a reality, we know how to get things done. Get in touch for more information.


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