# Flying a Drone Over a Crowd and why you don&\#8217;t do it.

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Flying a Drone Over a Crowd: Why You Don't and What It Costs If You Do Drone photography for events looks effortless from the outside. A sweeping shot over a packed field, the stage lit up, thousands of people below. What you do not see is that flying a drone over a crowd is one of the most tightly restricted things you can do in UK airspace, and getting it wrong is not a small mistake. It is a criminal offence, it can void your insurance, and if you are the event organiser it lands on your desk as well as the pilot's. If you are planning an event and picturing that aerial shot, here is what actually sits behind it. Flying a drone over a crowd in the UK Can you do it? No. Not in the everyday Open category, and not with any drone, whatever it weighs and whatever class mark it carries. This is the part people get wrong most often. The Open category is split into three sub-categories based on how close you can get to people, and the lightest sub-category is genuinely permissive. A sub-250g aircraft can work close to people who are not involved in the flight, and in some situations over them, which is exactly why we reach for one on a lot of jobs. What none of those sub-categories relax is the crowd ban. flying a drone over a crowd or assemblies of people are off limits across the whole of the Open category. A 249g drone is in precisely the same legal position as a 900g one the moment a crowd is underneath it. "But it is only a little one" is not an argument that survives contact with the Drone Code. What counts as a crowd? The CAA does not go by a headcount. An assembly of people is a gathering where the density is such that people cannot easily move away from it. That is a useful test, because it puts the focus on the thing that matters: if something falls out of the sky, can the people underneath get out of the way? Flying a drone over a crowd will always have inherent risks. More than you think if the wheel falls off and something happens. By that definition a festival crowd at the barrier is an assembly. So is a packed market, a race start line, a queue outside a venue, a crowded beach on a hot day. A handful of people spread across an open field is not. Part of the job on site is judging where that line sits at any given moment, because at an event it moves. Ground that is empty at four in the afternoon is an assembly by seven. Flying a drone over a crowd. You can't do it. When the are is unpopulated. Possibly, once risk assessed. You will still see the old "150 metres from crowds of more than 1,000 people" figure quoted online. That wording comes from a superseded part of the rules. If an operator quotes it at you, they are working from a version of the law that no longer applies. Does an Operational Authorisation allow flying a drone over a crowd? Not on its own, and this trips up plenty of otherwise competent operators. The next step up from the Open category is the Specific category, and the most common route into it is PDRA01, a pre-defined Operational Authorisation issued by the CAA. It buys you a lot: reduced separation from uninvolved people, work in built-up areas, the sort of tight urban flying the Open category will not allow. What it explicitly does not buy you is crowd overflight. PDRA01 requires 50 metres of horizontal separation from assemblies of people and states that overflight of assemblies must not be conducted. So a PDRA01 holder with a professional camera drone is in the same position as everyone else when a crowd is below. Flying close to or over a crowd sits outside PDRA01 entirely. It needs a bespoke Operational Authorisation applied for through UK SORA, the Specific Operations Risk Assessment process that replaced the old Operating Safety Case route in April 2025. That means a full risk assessment, an operations manual written for that operation, aircraft and containment measures that stand up to scrutiny, and CAA approval before anyone takes off. It is not a form you fill in the week of the show. Here is the honest version, and it is worth

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